And they tell of gold
by astrokath
Summary: Torene of Benden is well aware of her responsibilities as a Weyrwoman, and of how far beyond her own, autonomous Weyr they extend. When disaster threatens everything she holds most dear, Torene finds herself forced to hold the tide at bay alone...
1. Turning and turning

_After forty years of Threadfall, the end of the Pass is almost within sight. Benden Weyr flies at full strength, the Holds it protects are growing more numerous and prosperous with every passing year, and everyone knows that the coming Interval will offer the best possible chance to reverse Pern's technological and social declines...and, perhaps, to see the planet rid of Thread for good. But who will be first to seize the chances on offer? And, what will they make of them?_

_Torene of Benden is well aware of her responsibilities as a Weyrwoman, and of how far beyond her own, autonomous Weyr they extend. Dragonriders risk everything in Pern's defence, and it would be unconscionable to see their years of sacrifice wasted, even if that means setting personal friendships aside in the service of a greater good. But when disaster threatens everything she holds most dear, Torene finds herself forced to hold the tide at bay alone..._

_With so much at stake, how much can one woman save?_

* * *

><p><em>First Pass, 12.10.38<br>Marta Fremlich's Hold_

The sky above Marta's Hold was bitterly cold, the wind sweeping down from the North Ranges as fierce as ever, but neither the chill of the autumn air nor the absolute numbness of _between_ could dampen Torene of Benden's spirits. The Weyr was three days from its next threadfall, and the minds of well over five hundred dragons offered a warmth that was simply beyond compare. Torene's duties as Weyrwoman might have called her and M'hall away from their company for the day, but distance was little bar to her talent. Besides, the official founding of a new Hold, under the leadership of a woman she'd long counted as a friend, wasn't something she'd have wanted to miss even if her presence_ hadn't_ been specifically requested

Half a dozen dragonlengths to the north-east, M'hall's Brianth banked into a wide circle at his rider's prompting. _M'hall says the border-markers on the ridge-line still seem to be where they're supposed to be, _the bronze relayed on completing the manoeuvre,_ and he sees no reason why we need to dawdle over checking the rest when they haven't moved at all since this morning's sweep rider checked them, nor between the five sweeps before that._

_Of course they've not moved!_ Torene said, peering down at the ground to check for herself. _Fardling ridiculous of Kiersey, insisting that we make sure, but I suppose it'll save us time and arguments in the long run. _The new Hold's present boundary was precisely marked by piled brick cairns newly topped with rust-red pennants – hardly the sort of marker that even the most determined of holders could shift overnight – claiming the exact acreage that the existing adult population was entitled to under the Charter. Smaller cairns had also been placed along the adjacent ridges and river valleys, in preparation for the expected expansion to come. A turn ago, the whole landscape had been brown and bare, but now a patchwork of green and blue-green meadows extended in roughly east-west strips across the landscape, predominantly on the valley's south-westerly facing slopes. The most recently Thread-struck areas would still require several turns to recover fully, but a kind, bountiful summer and the chemical and microbial enrichment provided by several tonnes of premium manure, dredged seaweed and regular aerial deliveries of dragonshit had worked wonders on the older falls. Sheep grazed the native and imported grasses, with larger livestock promised to follow in the turns ahead.

_Marta may have claimed her Hold's chartered acres down to the last dragonlength of land, _Torene added, _but she's not taken an inch more! _

"She might have put her acres all in the same valley!" M'hall yelled across the intervening air several seconds later. He leaned forwards and slapped his bronze on the neck, encouraging Brianth onwards.

_So he wants to race, does he?_ Torene asked Alaranth privately as Brianth pulled away.

Torene's queen replied with a burst of infectious delight, increasing the pace of her own wingbeats. _Is it not the best of days for it, Rene? The sun is shining and no thread will fall. Our newest weyrlings are all safely Impressed. And while you say that we must make this flight today, I know for certain that it is the inside of your friend's Hold that you most wish to see, and that M'hall is equally keen to see the bottom of a cup of mulled wine. And to empty his bladder!_

_M'hall agrees that all of that is true, _Brianth said, _even the last...but he also says that Alaranth is in dire need of the exercise!_

_He does, does he? _Torene tucked herself tighter against Alaranth's neck as the queen passed her mate in the air. She grinned back at M'hall, her cheeks aching as she gritted her teeth against the cold._ Well, if he can't say that to her face, he can say it to her tail instead. Catch us if you can, Bri__anth!_ she goaded the bronze.

Out of condition Alaranth might have been, but she was still considerably larger than her mate. Torene and her queen had almost completed the circuit of the Hold's borders before Brianth pulled alongside them once again. "You took your time!" Torene called across to M'hall.

The Weyrleader shook his head, but – perhaps wisely – said nothing. _Shall we land, Rene? _Brianth asked.

_Yes, I think we've made enough of a show of ourselves now. Down there beside the pavilion, Allie dearest, and try not to spook the horses!_

It had been well over a month since Torene had last overflown Marta's Hold – Alaranth's clutch of twenty-nine eggs had included Benden's first new gold in over six turns, and the queen had been reluctant to let Torene out sight of her eggs, let alone to leave them herself – and much had changed in the intervening weeks. By all accounts, the main Hold itself was still a rather spartan affair. It was set in a small complex of natural caves at the northern end of a long valley, watered by a minor river that eventually fed into Benden Weyr's own. The river didn't offer the trading and transport potential of Ruatha's, but nor was its valley quite so prone to flooding. The main caverns were scarcely any better equipped than the sheep-fold half a klick to the south, and less popular besides on the colder nights...but with stonecutter access so hard to secure and even costlier to power, that was only to be expected. Instead, the settlers had requisitioned a year's usage of one of Benden Hold's wheeled Sleds, seeing more advantage in good haulage than in smooth and even interior walls.

Beneath the surface, the Hold's geology was also a bit of a green clutch: heavy clay soil, no coal seams worth the effort of mining, and the only firestone to speak of was far too unstable to be of any use to the Weyr...but even green clutches hatched the occasional bronze, as Marta and her resourceful recruits had proved. It was between the carefully fenced fields that the results of the Holders' most profitable labours could be seen: the denuded topsoil had been meticulously removed, and the exposed clay shaped and carted off to a series of firestone-fuelled trench-kilns to be baked into bricks. The kilns' fuel supply did have a habit of exploding in wet weather, it was true, but as a summer-time industry the benefits easily outweighed the risks. There was now a solidly durable red-brown road leading southwards from the Hold, lengthening dragonlength by dragonlength in its slow creep towards the Weyr. It would reach it well before the Pass was out, Marta had promised. That day was still a good decade away, but the morning's events were surely a sign in favour of better things to come.

_Today will be a good day, Allie, I know it, _Torene said as her queen settled gracefully onto the ground.

* * *

><p>A new Hold, founded and settled by two hundred motivated adults and their dependants, ready and willing to commit themselves to a life spent restoring the thread-denuded land back into fertile good health. It really <em>should<em> have been a sign of better things to come...but one word, just _one_ single word, had turned the whole day sour.

The day's events had started well enough, in spite of the lingering tensions between Marta Fremlich's burgeoning community and the residents of Benden Hold. After a very welcome mug of klah in the pavilion, Torene and M'hall had spent a good hour touring the new Hold's facilities in the company of the other visiting dignitaries. Sigurd and P'lo of Telgar Weyr had been kept away by Threadfall, and Sorka's Faranth was too egg heavy to fly, but Sean was there, as were Anya and T'rev of Ista Weyr. Telgar's Holders were likewise absent. Torene hadn't expected Telgar himself to come, not with his health as poor as it now was, but she had hoped that he might send someone in his stead. The delegates from the other Holds – Brian and Alari Hanrahan of Ruatha, Jennagee Liliencamp and Rebecca Benden of Fort, Boll's Suki Gar and Roberto Duff-Hamil from the College – were all good company, but they weren't half as quick to share gossip with her as either Cara Telgar or Torene's cousin Anatoly would have been.

The Benden delegation was even more of a disappointment. Benden's elected leader, Steffen Langsam, who Torene knew had argued long and hard against founding a new Hold before the Pass was over, was a silent, resentful presence throughout the tour. By contrast, Dee Kiersey, the self-appointed chairman of Benden's Resource Allocation Committee, was as garrulous as a buck wherry with his complaints. If Kiersey hadn't spent the _entire_ time disparaging the achievements of Marta's workforce, it was only because he was too busy making an overly meticulous inspection of every aspect of the place, frequently sending one or another of the three committee members who'd accompanied him up scaffolding, under tarpaulins, or into holes and cubbies to check on the details not immediately visible to the eye. _"Checking we've not purloined anything we shouldn't,"_ Marta had commented snidely. Torene's pointed look back towards the well secured and waterproofed firestone bunker, that Kiersey had baulked at sending even his least favoured minion too close to, was rewarded with a conspiratorial wink and an assurance that if Benden hadn't missed anything yet, they likely never would.

The tour had finished with fresh-baked pastries and mulled west-coast wine back at the pavilion. According to Euan Evans, one of Marta's deputies, the choice of wine reflected yet another snub from Benden Hold: they might have been forced to provide logistical support for her endeavour, but apparently they'd drawn the line well short of providing luxury goods. Still, at least as far as Torene was concerned, the Tillek vintage was a pleasant change from the Weyr's usual tithe. The rich flavours were warming through and through, and certainly made the formal speeches that followed less of a chore to listen through. Roberto Duff-Hamil did what he could to liven up his obligatory legalese – the founding of a new Hold had become considerably more formalised over the years – but Langsam's speech couldn't have been more grudging if he'd spent an entire year working on it.

Torene listened with only half her mind on the proceedings, applauding as and when prompted by the rest of the audience, allowing the rest of her thoughts to wander off in consideration of such weighty problems as whether it was redfruit, citrus or bramble juice that had been added to the wine, and if she had correctly identified the various spices. Beside her, M'hall and Sean wore matching expressions of glazed endurance, but from what Torene could hear from their dragons' side of the conversation, they were deep in discussion of threadfighting tactics for inclement weather. Her own dragon was sound asleep: Alaranth had found a sheltered sun-trap in the lee of one of the Hold's new boundary walls. The queen's cat-like comfort was dangerously infectious, and so rather than risk nodding off herself, Torene stretched her consciousness eastwards, back towards her home Weyr and the entertaining antics of twenty-nine two-day-old dragons, cavorting on the shore of the Weyr's lake. Tonja would be watching them from somewhere, she was sure – her youngest was as dragon-mad as M'hall had been at that age, everyone said – but she suspected that Liam would still be sulking. He'd been left standing for three clutches running now, but, son of the Weyrleaders or not, Alaranth's hatchlings wouldn't be the last to ignore him if he didn't mend his attitude. Perhaps she should foster him out to one of Marta's people for a year or two?

"Has she let slip what she's calling the place yet, Torene?"

Torene started at the sound of Sean's voice, as soft as it was. She blinked, forcing her eyesight back into proper focus. Marta and her two deputies were still standing at the cloth-draped table that held the Hold's Founding Charter. Kiersey was shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot at the edge of the podium, concealing his impatience with ill grace. Langsam had finally abandoned the lectern to rejoin his colleague, leaving Duff-Hamil to conclude the initial formalities with the long list of subsidiary Holders...but if he was only just past the Mayhews, there was still some way to go.

"Not yet," Torene said, turning to her weyrmate's father with a smile. "Marta refused point-blank to tell me. She was very clear that she wanted it to be a surprise."

"But you've got your suspicions, Rene," M'hall murmured. "And enough confidence to put marks on it, too, unless you were betting on something _else_, yesterday?"

Shells, she'd thought she'd been more surreptitious than that. "Well now you've spoiled_ your_ surprise, M'hall! Assuming I'm right, of course."

"She won't bet on clutch colours or who'll Impress what," M'hall said with a chuckle as they clapped for the last of the extended Patrick clan, "but if there's the slightest hint of scuttlebutt stirring in the Holds..."

Torene rolled her eyes. "Just because _your _family never leaves anything to chance! I've barely left the Hatching Sands at all over the last month, so how you think I've found the time to-"

"Says the woman who hears the chatter of every last dragon on Pern when she chooses to listen," Sean reminded her, though not unkindly.

"Oh, all right!" Torene lowered her voice, conscious that Roberto would soon be drawing to a close – he was into the Sampsons now. "One clue, and then you'll know just as much as I do: this Hold will bear a woman's name, you can count on that."

"Hold Fremlich?" Sean asked.

She shook her head. "Marta's had it up to here with one or two families lording it over all the rest, and that fardling Resource Allocation Committee's ideas about a properly _productive_ workforce. Naming this place after herself is the last thing she'll do...though she's more than earned the right for it."

From each according to their ability, to each according to their need, that was how it was supposed to work, but the way it was being put into practice in Benden Hold these days came close to turning Torene's stomach. The discrimination wasn't exactly overt, but it was blatant enough to those with the wits to see it. Girls brought in on Search whose technical education lagged far, far behind their male counterparts; lean and scrawny boys with the wrong set of last names, dull-eyed and sun-dark from too many hours spent labouring in the fields. Langsam had made it pretty obvious over the last few years that Benden Hold was gearing up for a massive expansion when the Pass was over...but it had been equally clear that the greatest beneficiaries would be his own relatives and cronies.

M'hall and Torene had still been discussing what might be done to alleviate the problem when Marta had solved it for everyone. She'd inveigled her way onto Kiersey's committee, and then, _'in the interests of efficient forward-planning'_, persuaded him to push for a full-Hold vote on what minimum proportion of Benden's personnel and resources would automatically be ceded to its first independent daughter-Hold. Torene and M'hall had both been quietly delighted when, barely a day after the votes had been counted, Marta had announced her intention to found her own Hold before the year was out, and that she already had the necessary support required by the Pass-time Charter to do so. And, by stripping Benden Hold of as many adults as she had, Marta had set Benden's own expansion plans back by years, if not a full generation: the Chartered acreage it was entitled to claim by virtue of its population now fell far short of its existing boundaries, and the resulting skills shortage would _force_ Benden's leaders to do better by the less valued members of the Hold. And about time, too, Torene reckoned!

"No, it wouldn't be Hold Fremlich," M'hall said. "Nor anything too literal, not from Marta. A woman's name, though? Boll's already taken, and Telgar..."

"Sallah's not," Torene pointed out.

"...but if anyone deserves some extra recognition, it's Kitti and Wind Blossom. Marta might have been left standing at every clutch she stood for, but she respects dragonkind deeply."

"Ping Hold, then?" Sean frowned, mouthing the name silently to himself. "Well deserved indeed, but it's no Ruatha."

"Why not both?" Torene whispered, smiling. "'Pingsallah' has a nice ring to it."

Sean didn't look convinced, but there was neither time nor reason for Torene to persuade him otherwise: with the Vickery twins named, Duff-Hamil stepped away from the lectern at last. Marta thanked him and moved up to take his place. She waited, relaxed and smiling, until the applause died down before starting to speak.

"Don't worry, _I_ don't intend to talk for very long," Marta began, to quiet chuckles from the crowd. "We've come a long way from Benden Hold, and I want to make it clear from the outset that we're going to do things differently here. All of us, together. _This_ Hold will be home to a community with properly communal values, a community that will work as one, greater than the sum of its parts – great _because_ of its parts. No adult, no child, is more or less valued than any other – nor any skill-set, or ambition, or dream. Who we are, who we become, will be what we make of ourselves and each other, unconstrained by expectations, unlimited by unearned privilege."

A good start, Torene thought, as the partisan members of the audience applauded through Marta's pause. She nudged Brianth's mind and M'hall in the ribs, probing for her weyrmate's verdict.

_M'hall also approves, _Brianth supplied.

_What does Sean think, Carenath? s_he asked.

_A little trite, but she's playing to the crowd, he says. And he thinks Benden deserves the criticism, the way they've been going these last few years._

_A shame that Langsam won't hear a word of it, _Torene sent back_._

On the podium, Marta raised a hand and silenced the crowd. "Effort and ingenuity will be recognised and rewarded, and those marginalised by poverty or parentage given space and support in which to thrive. Disagreements will be welcomed as valuable discourse, not quashed as dissent! _This_ Hold will welcome all opinions, and the voices of the living will speak far louder in our councils than the misguided notions of men long dead."

Now what did Marta mean by _that_? Torene wondered. Benden's founders were all alive and well. She glanced across at M'hall and Sean, frowning.

_Strange rhetoric there, Sean says, _Carenath sent.

"Any idea?" M'hall murmured.

Torene shook her head. _No idea, _she told both bronzes.

"As I said, we've come a long way from Benden Hold," Marta continued, "and even further before that. We've crossed continents to get here – and oceans – and the cold darkness of the heavens. We've charted our own course, and will continue to do so. But we won't forget our roots. We thank the Holds that have sustained us, the people that have supported us, and remember with respect and gratitude the sacrifice of those who died for all of us."

_Sean says he thinks you might be right about the name,_ Carenath said. _No mention of dragons yet, but Sallah _was_ a pilot._

"_This _Hold has not forgotten a woman whose gifts were unappreciated while she was alive," Marta continued, "a woman sidelined by a hierarchy that should _never_ have been permitted to survive! A woman who died a hero's death in the very element she'd mastered."

"_Definitely_ Sallah," Sean whispered.

But Torene had been watching Marta closely as she spoke, and knew her well enough to recognise the meaning behind the woman's controlled and resolute features. Whatever Marta was about to say wasn't going to be welcomed. Which meant...

"Oh, Marta, no!" Torene glanced desperately across at Sean, saw the slight smile on his face that was doomed to die in the space of mere moments. And what would follow...

_There's trouble?_

_Not the kind a dragon need worry about, but oh, Allie, yes, I think there is!_

"_This_ Hold has forgotten neither the founding principles of this colony, nor the talent which brought us safely across a sky full of stars to our beautiful, perilous Pern.

_Carenath, please keep Sean calm! Brianth-_

"She wouldn't!" M'hall hissed, placing a cautioning hand on his father's wrist. Sean frowned, and shushed him.

"I offer you welcome," Marta declared, "now and for always... to _Bitra Hold_!"

A stunned almost-silence followed. Torene let out her breath – she'd been holding it, hoping to be wrong – in a despairing sigh. Behind her, at least one person gasped in shock, and she heard the dull tinkle of a dropped ceramic mug breaking on the brick paving. Up on the podium, one of Kiersey's deputies applauded, very briefly, before the realisation of what he was doing sank home and he dropped his arms to his sides in mortification.

After that, the silence lingered, growing palpably more unpleasant with every passing second.

Torene waited in numb horror, hoping with all her heart that Marta would take the name back, declare the whole thing a joke. The atmosphere was heavy with palpable outrage, fury, denial...and from Marta's people, equally silent, grim and determined satisfaction. And then, the significance of the eight pointed stars on the Hold's billowing red pennants finally fell into place for her: as the sigil of an astrogator, not just a pleasing design. No, there was no mistake here, just deliberate spite!

Sean was the first person to break the silence. "How dare you! _Bitra _Hold? How _dare_ you!"

Marta smiled mildly. "How dare I? I _dare_, Weyrleader Connell, because I'm not some blind sheep like the rest of Langsam's herd. And nor are any of the rest of Bitra's holders!"

M'hall caught Torene's eye, and pointedly removed his hand from his father's wrist before crossing both arms over his chest. "She's on her own, Rene."

"Avril Bitra was a self-serving boil on humanity's arse," Sean said, lowering his voice in a manner that had always given Torene the shivers, "and you, you...! If Telgar were here today, to see the depths you've sunk to... Fremlich, I swear on Carenath's life that I will _never_ set foot within the bounds of your Hold again. Welcome to Bitra? Fah! You can consider your own welcome revoked, now and for fecking always." With that, he turned and stormed out of the pavilion.

"Hear, hear!" Kiersey said.

"Thread take the lot of you!" That was Jenagee Liliencamp, but there was a catch in her voice that suggested she was close to tears. "And even _that'_s better than this shit-hole deserves," she added, before dashing away after Sean.

Marta simply looked away, blanking them all. "Legist Duff-Hamil? If you're ready?"

Roberto twitched, confusion clear on his features, but when Marta repeated his name a second time he fell back to the security of his script. "Ah. Um. I hereby declare that... that as of this moment, as prescribed by the formal terms of Pern's Charter, Bitra is now a fully legal and autonomous Hold. Congratulations, Ms. Fremlich."

_Now _the locals applauded, drowning out the outraged voices of opposition with stamped feet and a loud chant of their Hold's abominably inappropriate name. Torene felt M'hall's hand tighten on her shoulder as the words sounded again and again and again: _Bitra Hold! Bitra Hold! Bitra Hold! _"Shall we leave, love?" he muttered into her ear.

Brianth had already dropped from the Hold's fire-heights, Torene sensed, and she didn't think it would be long before the dragons who'd conveyed the other guests followed suit. And the sooner the Benden delegation departed, the better! "You go," Torene said, shaking her head. Up on the podium, Marta, all smiles and grace, was thanking Roberto for his service. Kiersey was scowling furiously – a sentiment Torene could definitely empathise with – but Langsam looked to be on the verge of thumping the first person to get within arms' reach. "Get Langsam and Kiersey and the rest of them out of here."

"You're _staying_, Rene?"

"Fardling yes!" Torene hissed. "I'm not leaving until Marta's told me_ what the hell she's been playing at!_"

* * *

><p>Although the formal speeches were supposedly all over and done with, Marta had had plenty more to say to her own people: much of it focused on extolling the virtues of Avril the astrogator and pilot, and the value of challenging unmerited authority. The pavilion rapidly emptied of visitors, the mood lightening and becoming more celebratory with each successive departure. Torene fled to the back of the Pavilion, resisting the lingering urge to tear it down with her bare hands.<p>

Eventually, Roberto Duff-Hamil made his own escape from the jubilant crowd of locals. "I _swear_ I had no idea," he said as he came over, seeming genuinely contrite. He had a mug of wine in each hand, one of which he held out to her.

Torene waved the mug away: she liked mulled wine well enough when it was piping hot, but cold was another matter. "It's okay. I'm not angry at _you_."

Roberto shrugged, downed his own mug, then started on the one he'd meant for her. "_I'm_ angry at me," he said between sips. "It's _my_ name on all the fardling documents!"

Torene took in Roberto's glum expression, the unsteady sway of his torso, the speed at which he was drinking, and the way his gaze kept darting towards the girls at the serving table...and decided that he probably didn't have flirting on his mind. "I'll call someone to collect you, Legist."

"Told Miriam I'd be here until sundown," he muttered. "Don't want to disturb busy dragonriders on top of everything else."

"One of my people would be happy to convey you back to the College," she said, reaching out to Findreth back at the Weyr. _Tell A'tony that I've a small job for one of your senior weyrlings, Findreth. Roberto Duff-Hamil needs a lift from...from _Marta's_ Hold. Here's a local visual,_ she added, picturing the lines of the Hold from the air with Alaranth and the pavilion placed in clear view. "Or you could stay with us at the Weyr overnight," she suggested, keeping the final thought of _until you sober up_ firmly to herself.

"That would be...yes, thank you, Weyrwoman, that would be very nice."

_Katya and Shannoath will be with you shortly, _Findreth sent_._

Torene thanked Findreth silently while acknowledging Roberto's words with a nod. "Good. You head on out, Roberto. My oldest is on her way; she'll take you wherever you'd prefer."

"Thank you," he said again before stumbling for the pavilion's opening.

_I've told Shannoath that she should fly gently_, Alaranth said, a mixture of amusement and distaste in her mind as she shared her rider's awareness, _unless she wants a second swim today_. _And it wasn't easy, but I made your friend who you don't like any more hear me. The sun has gone in and this place grows tiresome._

_You_ did_?_

_I did!_

Sure enough, the crowd of locals was shifting, allowing Marta through. She'd unbuttoned her jacket for comfort and was rubbing at the side of her head as she walked, as if it pained her. The action loosened several tendrils of blonde hair from the clasp at the nape of her neck, but she seemed too preoccupied to notice. In fact, Marta didn't look half as confident and sure of herself as she had done while up on the podium. Well, it was nothing less than she deserved, Torene decided.

Marta came to a halt several strides away from where Torene was standing. "Weyrwoman Torene," she said, firm and formal.

"Holder Fremlich," Torene replied in kind.

"I gather you're angry at me." She shrugged off her jacket and tossed it over the back of a nearby chair. Then, her face creased into a broad smile, and she laughed. "Don't you get it, Rene?"

Torene crossed her arms, unconsciously taking on the pose she usually reserved for idiot riders who'd endangered their dragons in some manner. "Get it? This_ insanity_? No-one in their right mind would _ever _name a Hold after her! What under the Red Star are you playing at, Marta?"

Marta extended both hands towards her in a clear gesture of appeal, the mis-matched charms on her bracelets jangling – but regardless of whether it was done for understanding or forgiveness, Torene had no intention of granting either.

"Rene. Rene, it's_ just_ a name!"

"It's not _just a name_, and you sharding well know it! Scoring points over Langsam and Kiersey, that I can understand...but blighting this place with a name like _Bitra_? If Telgar had been here today..."

"You think it was a _coincidence_ that Thread just happens to be falling over his Hold, right this very moment?"

That detail was enough to give Torene pause. "I never thought _you_ that much of a coward, Marta."

"And now you do. Well, then." Marta rolled her eyes and gave a self-deprecating laugh. "Telgar's known right from the start, Rene, not that it matters. He doesn't like it, but he doesn't have to. It's _better_ that he doesn't like it."

"Better how? You've just alienated practically everyone who matters on the entire planet!"

"_Everyone who matters_, Rene? That's exactly the kind of wherry-shit I'd expect from Langsam or Kiersey but I never expected to hear it from you!"

The woman's tone was kindly – and her words damningly accurate – but it did little to soften the fact that she'd just chided a Weyrwoman of Pern to her face. A stinging retort came quickly to Torene's lips, but she swallowed it back, unspoken. There was a twinkle in Marta's pale blue eyes that really oughtn't be there...and, seeing it, Torene realised that she'd been so swept up by the strong emotions of the crowd that she hadn't really stopped to think about how out of character it was for Marta to do what she'd just done. Either her friend had had a complete personality transplant – or gone mad – or there was something Torene had _missed_.

Torene took a breath, and decided to go with the latter. "Wait. You're telling me you _wanted_ to alienate them all? That you _chose_ to set yourself up in obvious opposition... not just to Langsam, but to _all_ the Holds?"

Marta nodded, her smile broadening. "Keep going, Rene," she murmured.

And oh, for the love of dragons, as soon as she bothered looking for the answer there it was! Starting a Hold was tough. You needed resources, human most of all: unskilled labourers, skilled technicians, and a supportive community made up of their husbands, wives and children – but why would anyone want to move to where the work was hardest, resources were limited, and the luxuries few and far between? Well, most wouldn't...but for some, what Marta had just done would be more than reason enough. All the malcontents of Pern would flock to her banner, and work all the harder _because_ of what a hold named Bitra would inevitably stand for.

Torene choked out a brief laugh. "You did it to win a _workforce_?"

"Any way I can, Rene, any way I can!" Marta held out her hands again, and this time Torene stepped forward and took them. "I _am_ sorry I couldn't warn you. You'll explain why to M'hall, won't you? And Sean?"

"I don't know that they'll _listen, _Marta." But really, did it matter? Torene looked around the pavilion, at the celebrating Holdfolk of Bitra who'd hung on Marta's every word throughout the day's events. Hard-working, normal, decent people, who were arguably far better off than they would have been back at Benden, who deserved to be happy with all they'd achieved. "Oh, shaffitall, Marta! Get this place running better than Langsam's Hold, and maybe one day we'll even grow to _like_ the name."

"Like the name? Ugh!" Marta screwed up her face into an exaggerated expression of distaste. "Why would you do a thing like that?"

"You chose it, Marta!"

"Yes, I did," she said with a chuckle. "But I'm bloody well going to change it to something better, just as soon as the Pass is over!"

* * *

><p><em>Author's Note: This story was written for the Rare Women fic exchange earlier in 2014. Re-reading <em>The Second Weyr prior to writing it,<em> certain aspects of the story really struck me, particularly the appalling double standards. Having taken on the challenge of writing about Torene, setting the story in her future was the obvious way to sidestep at least some of the inbuilt misogyny of Anne's Pern - Torene and M'hall have both had a chance to grow up, settle into their roles, and learn how to respect each other as people rather than plot-coupons. And, I figured that it ought to make her better placed to fight Pern's somewhat inevitable descent into Feudal Nightmare Land as well, which was what I saw as the meat of the prompt I had for her as a character.  
><em>

_The reasons for naming a Hold after Avril Bitra are hand-wavily explained in the Dragonlover's Guide to Pern, but the divisions that such a naming implies are far more interesting to me than the choice of the name itself. Pern moves very, very quickly from a futuristic small-government meritocracy to a misogynistic agrarian hell-hole, and while I do think the colonists were an incredibly short sighted bunch who ought to have thought things through a little better, I don't think that such extreme social changes were their original intent._

_Aside from the DLG snippet, and the obvious sources of the first and second Pass novels and shorts, I've also pulled a few details from Todd's Pernese canon. (Exploding firestone! What's not to love?) There'll be more of those coming later on._


	2. In the widening gyre

_First Pass, 13.10.41  
>Ierne Island<em>

Twenty klicks north of the island's deserted harbour, but still well short of where the wide Ierne Channel gave way to open ocean, Torene finally spotted the object of her search. She raised an arm, pointing towards the small grey shapes in the distance: dolphins, leaping out of the water in exuberant delight. "Look there, Marta!"

"Where?" Marta shouted back. She tightened her grip on Torene's waist and cautiously leaned out sideways a little. "Ahh, got them!"

As Alaranth brought them closer to the circling pod of dolphins, Torene realised that there was purpose behind the dolphins' constant movement: the pod was keeping a school of fishy prey corralled. A small fair of fire-lizards was in the air above the dolphins, their aerial acrobatics equally as artful. Torene guessed that there might be as many as two dozen of them darting through the air, skimming the swell, and diving beneath the waves every once in a while to pick off a meal of their own. Two of the firelizards – bronzes, both – popped briefly out of _between _half a length from Alaranth's head_, _lingering only long enough for the queen to assure the little creatures that she wasn't at all hungry.

_As if any prey of theirs might have a hope of satisfying me! _the queen thought to Torene, highly amused by their presumption in warning her away from their dinners. _I have told them I have no interest in their fish, and that we are here to speak to the dolphins. They both think that is foolish, because the dolphins do not hear them or speak to them like I can._

_Foolish? Coming from a creature as a frivolous as a firelizard?_

_The dolphins do not hear me, either, _Alaranth added regretfully.

_You've tried? _Torene squinted down at the bright water, trying to guess at the height of the swell. _Ah well, that was always a long shot. Easier for us if they could, but it doesn't really matter. Take us closer, and I'm sure we'll get their attention then, especially if you're noisy enough._

_I shall splash them if I have to! Tell your friend – she cannot hear me any better than the dolphins can today!_

_I will, _Torene replied, before turning her head to warn Marta. "We're going down now, hang on!" she called out.

A few seconds later, Alaranth banked into a steep, curving descent that set the other woman gasping. The queen's flight came to within half a dragonlength of the surface, almost low enough for her wingtips to touch the heavy swell on the down-strokes. Approaching the pod at speed, she called out as she came close, her cry a clear, prolonged note that demanded attention. The dolphins immediately disappeared into the depths, and the fire-lizards, most of whom had been so intent on filling their bellies that they still hadn't noticed the queen, vanished _between _en masse.

_I think they heard you that time, _Torene thought to her queen, smiling wryly. "Now where have they all gone?"

The two bronze firelizards were the first to reappear, chittering with annoyance close to Alaranth's headknobs. The queen mentally swatted them away, and they both blinked _between_ again, rejoining the rest of their fair closer to the water. Without the dolphins maintaining a perimeter, the fortunate school of fish was no longer hemmed in, and the other firelizards were busily engaged in picking off as many of the stragglers as they could. Alaranth stroked her wings, circling tightly to keep the spot where the dolphins had vanished in view. _Do you see them yet, Rene?_

"There!" Marta said, unconsciously answering the queen's question.

Torene turned to look. "I see them," she said. "Seven – no, nine fins, I count, but they're moving around so much it's hard to tell." Torene guided Alaranth to fly a little closer, and it wasn't long before the first curious, elongated face emerged from the water, soon followed by a second, then a third. The fourth dolphin to appear, who Torene guessed was either old or unfortunate going by its plethora of scars, propelled itself a good length backwards on its flukes, more out of the water than in, before splashing back down beneath the waves.

"Hello Dolphins!" Marta called out, waving one arm vigorously while the other maintained its death-grip on Torene's belt. "Helloooo!"

Leaving Marta to it, Torene concentrated and reached for the mind of green Harth, who was perhaps half an hour's flight further to the north-west, skirting the fish-rich maze of marshes and estuaries along the Cibola coast. _Harth, it's Torene. Would you tell Sara we've found a pod, please?_

_I have. She says that's good work. Are you close to Ierne? Or the mainland?_

_No, _Torene sent back, along with an image of the pod against the backdrop of the Dorado coast. _Two, three klicks from the mainland, and about twenty from Ierne itself._

_That's not too far. You should give them the 'follow' signal she taught you, my Sara says. She asks if Alaranth can lead them back to the harbour at Lockahatchee?_

_Of course we can, Harth. We'll see you there?_

_Yes!_

Torene shifted her seat, twisting around as far as she could manage. Marta had stopped waving, and was so distracted by watching the dolphins that she'd finally loosened her death-grip on Torene's belt. "Sara says we should try to lead them back to the harbour, so we'll be giving them the 'follow' signal, then flying back straight. Do you want to do the honours?"

"Two claps for attention, then a large counter-clockwise circle with the right arm, repeated twice?"

Torene nodded. "That's the one."

"Well, here goes. Hope it works."

Marta had barely finished her first hand-claps when the scarred dolphin followed suit with a flipper, slapping it loudly against the water's surface. Her subsequent gesture was similarly mimicked: the same dolphin ducked beneath a wave, then made a tight circle in the water before bobbing back up again to click at them. Dolphin and woman then repeated the signal-pattern in perfect unison.

Torene chuckled. "Yeah, I'd say that worked! Come on, Alaranth, back to the harbour, and lets see how many of them follow."

"I just hope they have some answers for us," Marta said. "That ship has to be around here somewhere!"

"We'll find it this time," Torene said, with far more certainty than she actually felt. It was bad luck indeed that the first collaborative venture between Bitra and Tillek Hold had gone so badly wrong. The last communications received from the ship by either Hold – now almost a month out of date – had placed it still firmly in the vicinity of Ierne Island, but the separate searches made by the dragonriders of Benden and Fort had failed to find any sign of it, either out in the open or inside one of Ierne's Sea Caverns. Since then, rumours over the missing ship's fate had flitted across Pern with all the speed and senselessness as a whole fair of badly-trained firelizards. That the _Lady Tethys _ might have been sunk by a storm, or by thread-damage, was the simple, boring solution. No, _the thuggish Bitrans had turned on Naomi Tillek's crew_, one rumour went, or _corrupted them into piracy!_ went another, even more ridiculous than the first. A third rumour had the ship's crew and supercargo alive and well and hiding out somewhere on the island, where they were building a renegade colony of their own – with the help and collusion of the dragonriders, some people were adding. Unfortunately, there _was _some truth to that one – Marta had shared her plans for a post-Pass resettlement of Ierne with Benden's Weyrleaders when word of the _Lady Tethys_' disappearance had first come to light. Torene had been dreading the inevitable day when Benden Hold discovered that the Bitrans really were intending to steal a march on them in the South ever since.

_It worries you, doesn't it?_ Alaranth thought. _That relations between the Holds will continue to worsen?_

_Yes, Allie, it does. _Torene sighed softly to herself. Even if _Lady Tethys_ did turn up somewhere, with all hands alive and its cargo intact, she wasn't certain that it would make any difference at all. It was almost three years to the day since Bitra's ill-received naming, and Torene was still hard pressed to decide what rankled with Benden Hold's leadership more: the simple fact of Bitra's name, or that the Hold was finally doing better than subsistence-level survival, in spite of the dubious worth of a large proportion of its populace.

Many of Bitra's successes had come directly at Benden's expense. The loss of so many of Benden Hold's key personnel to Bitra's founding should have been warning enough...but it was one that had, unfortunately, gone utterly unheeded by Steffen Langsam, Dee Kiersey, and their ilk. Shortly before midsummer, the tensions within Benden Hold's increasingly stratified population had finally boiled over. Three people had been killed in the riot – or murdered, depending on who you spoke to – and, over the course of the following month, easily a thousand men, women and children had made the hard trek north-west to Bitra, greatly adding to the steady trickle of the dissatisfied, the criminally inclined or the otherwise unwanted who'd joined the new Hold from elsewhere on Pern.

Steffen Langsam had been apoplectic at what he saw as an_ 'outright mutiny'_, and had made repeated demands for the Weyr to intervene and return his Hold's people to Benden – not that he had any legal grounds on which to make such a demand, not with freedom of movement being enshrined in Pern's Charter, and the Weyrs of Pern being avowedly neutral. Langsam had, eventually, given up on trying to retrieve the people he'd lost, declaring that anyone else who felt so inclined was more than welcome to abandon the safety of Benden Hold's protection...so long as they paid exorbitant border-duties for anything and everything they took with them, right down to the clothes on their backs. Dee Kiersey, on the other hand, had been far quicker to wash his hands of the so-called mutineers. In Torene's opinion, Kiersey was neither malicious nor clever enough to have orchestrated the riots himself, but he'd certainly seen the advantage in the aftermath: Benden's five-yearly leadership elections had been a mere three months away at the time, and Langsam's chances of re-election had just been flamed right down to almost nothing, while a large number of the opposition candidate's supporters had just voted with their feet.

After that, the outcome of the vote had been sadly predictable, but only time would tell what having Kiersey in charge would mean for Benden Hold. Provided that a Hold tithed its allotted portion in full, and supplied trained groundcrews on the days when Thread fell and sufficient youngsters to stand as candidates to the Weyr's new-hatched dragons, its internal politics were none of the Weyr's business. Kiersey had been quick to remind everyone of that, right before banning his people from any trade or contact with Bitra Hold at all.

The Weyrs might have no legal means of intervening directly in inter-Hold politics, but there were other ways in which they could express their favour or displeasure. Torene and M'hall had started by choosing to attending Bitra's Harvest Gather instead of Benden's. It had been a very mixed affair, overall: Bitra's culinary offerings had consisted primarily of numerous bean-based dishes washed down with weak ale, but the new murals painted by the Hold's children had been of surprisingly high quality, and the afternoon's foot races and evening's bare-knuckle fights had been very hotly contested.

Still, for all of the celebratory atmosphere, it had rapidly become obvious to both Torene and M'hall that the loss of the _Lady Tethys_ had dealt a heavy blow to the Hold's already fragile morale. Bitra might offer equal opportunities to all, but at the expense of a grinding, laborious existence. The Hold's resources were stretched thin at the best of times, luxury goods were practically unheard of, and drink and fistfights could only serve as adequate distractions for so long. And so, before the Weyrleaders had departed Bitra for their home Weyr, Torene had suggested that they make one final, extensive search for the missing _Lady Tethys: _a search that would profit both Hold and Weyr even if the ship itself remained missing.

Five days after Bitra's Gather, four full Wings accompanied by fifty-odd Lower Caverns workers departed from Benden Weyr for Ierne Island, collecting well over a hundred additional passengers from Bitra Hold _en route. _Marta had requested only a single Wing for her people – or two, if the Weyr could spare the dragons – but as far as M'hall was concerned the opportunity had been too good to miss. It had been a long, hard summer for the Weyr, and even a single day's holiday would do everyone the world of good.

With four Wings to share the workload, the dragonriders' aerial sweeps could be completed within a couple of hours, while the Bitrans would offset the favour of their transportation with a share of whatever resources they could find. Even after lying abandoned for a decade and a half, patches of greenery still flourished here and there on the island: in long, winding lines that tracked the banks of rivers and streams, in broad swathes across the wetlands where Thread couldn't burrow, and in a multitude of other smaller patches that had been capriciously defended by the local firelizards. Fourteen years of threadfall would have selected for the hardiest plantstock, and those were what Marta's holders were most keen to take back with them, along with any left-behind fixtures and fittings from the Island's abandoned dwellings and as many firelizard clutches as they could find. One particularly brave – or foolhardy – group of Bitrans had come equipped with nets, spears, ropes and other climbing equipment, intending to raid the cliff-nests of Ierne's wherries for eggs to hatch, hand-rear, wing-clip and domesticate. No-one was giving _that_ idea very good odds for succeeding, but the climbers would almost certainly have some stories to tell afterwards, assuming they didn't get themselves pecked to death first! Even limiting the Bitrans to no more than they could carry, the scavenged goods they'd take back north with them would go a long way towards recouping the loss of the _Lady Tethys_' cargo, if not the lives of those who'd sailed on her. And, if the dolphins could solve the mystery surrounding the ship's fate, relations between Bitra and Pern's western Holds might _not _be irredeemably soured.

Torene leaned out and forwards a little way, looking down at the sea, in the hope of catching a glimpse of the dolphins. It took a few seconds, but eventually she spotted a pair of them, leaping out of the water in tandem. "They're still following," she told Marta.

"Good. And that green on the left side of the harbour? Is that your dolphineer's dragon?"

"Yes, that's Harth." Ahead of them, the undulating hills and valleys of Ierne were drawing steadily closer. Torene had only seen the island a few times during its final years as an inhabited settlement, and it had fallen into a very sorry state since then. "I can't believe you mean to come back here one day. You'll have a lot of work on your hands getting the place up and running again."

Marta sighed. "It's still home to me, even looking like this. Although, after fifteen years of neglect, I'm a little surprised it's not even _worse_! And five more at least before we can come back properly."

"Only five?"

"Look at the place, Rene – even with everything Thread's done to it, it's far too good to lose."

Torene cast a dubious eye towards the tumbledown harbour and the thread-bared hills that rose above it, striped by deep channels eroded by the rain. "It is?"

"Of course! And we won't be the only Northern Hold sending people back south to farm, fish and forage, I'm sure, but _my _labourers will earn a more than fair price for their work. So long as Bitra gets fed, they can keep their half of their wealth... and bring it back north when Thread falls again." Marta shrugged. "The Brute Squads will be happier down here, whether thread's still falling or not, and the sooner I can get some of _them_ away from the main Hold the better! But we won't occupy the Caverns for long, I think, here or in Orkney County. Kiersey's folk can keep 'em. Maybe there'll be a proper Hold down here again some day – and a Dorado Weyr in those cliff-caves on the mainland – but we'll be there, up on the hills."

"Up there?" Torene said, frowning. "They look-"

"Defensible, I know! And the views from Beacon Hill are to die for."

That hadn't been at all the point that Torene been meaning to make, and realising the eventualities that Marta was planning for left her feeling disquieted. _People are people, I suppose, _she thought to her queen. _I shan't breathe a word to anyone from Benden Hold about this – shells, it'd only give them ideas! – but M'hall and Sean should know, and the other Weyrleaders. And to think we thought our troubles would _end_ with Thread!_

In the distance, Torene caught sight of a small group of dragons skirting the low cliffs that ran for many miles south west of Lockahatchee Harbour.

_Noldrith_, Alaranth supplied, quicker to identify the lead dragon than Torene could herself.

_Thanks, Allie. _Torene closed her eyes and reached for the mind of B'kar's brown. _Noldrith? I thought everyone would be finished with their sweeps by now. You're supposed to be relaxing!_

_We will, soon,_ the old brown sent back. _Just one more pass. B'kar is certain that we can find the missing ship. It's close to low tide here, and there are some caves here that might not have been checked yet._

_Very well_. If anyone was going to find the missing ship all by themselves, B'kar was probably the most likely suspect. The Kaarvan family were some of the best seafarers on Pern, and B'kar had been no exception. _We might have a better idea of where we should be looking, soon. Sara's going to ask some local dolphins for help. If they come up with anything, would B'kar like to lead the search?_

_Very much, yes!_

_Good. Don't overdo it now, then!_

Torene passed on a quick update to Brianth, then opened her eyes again. Noldrith and his wingmates had disappeared from view, and Alaranth was within minutes of reaching the harbour. The queen made a smooth descent, and landed lightly on the slipway that led up to the harbour-cavern. Torene helped Marta down, and then both women made their way back along the side of the harbour and then down the length of the breakwater to where Harth and Sara were waiting for them. The former dolphineer was staring out to sea, one hand raised to shield her eyes from the bright sunlight.

"Can you see them yet?" Torene called out to her.

"Four fins in the first group, and more coming on behind," Sara answered, before dropping down to the ground from her dragon's neck with as much grace as a one-legged rider could manage, her crutch wedged beneath one arm. "Lucky you for finding them, Rene! Could've sworn they'd head for the south side of the Island with tides like today's, but it's far from the first time a dolphin's caught me out. Fishing, were they?"

"Yes, until we interrupted!"

Sara's weather-worn face creased into a grin. "I'll hear all about it when they get here, I'm sure. Won't be long now. Good sized pod, too. I counted nineteen at least, but-" She broke off with a gasp as a large dolphin leapt out of the water almost directly in front of her. The gasp turned into a delighted shriek as the creature twisted in the air. "Ammie! Amadeus, you _stinker_!" She chucked her crutch aside and followed him into the water, utterly uncaring of the fact that she was still fully clothed.

Torene couldn't help but laugh when woman and dolphin reappeared; she hadn't seen Sara look so happy in years. "An old friend, I take it?"

"Best I had before Harth found me," Sara said. "Ammie says he guessed I might be here and raced all the way to find out!" Still with one arm wrapped around the dolphin for support, Sara turned to greet the other dolphins as they entered the harbour. "Name them for me, Ammie...shells, is that Kibby? _The _Kibby? Miracle enough to see you, but I never thought I'd see _her _still alive after so many years."

The dolphin's chittering response was so rapid that it was almost completely incomprehensible to Torene's ears, but Sara seemed to make sense of it. "Ammie says that if _I'd _feasted on Thread three times a week for the last forty years, I might look so good. He says that he and Kibby may decide to swim to the darker sea when Thread finally stops falling, but right now life is far too good to abandon."

"Which one's Kibby?" Torene asked.

"The one with all the scars – there, see? Daredevil, she is: only half of those are threadscores." Sara frowned. "Ammie says you've already met her?

"I suppose we have, if she's the same one who copied our signal." Torene smiled down at the dolphins. "Hello, Amadeus. Hello Kibby. I hope we didn't spoil your fishing."

Amadeus dipped his head to one side. _Not spoil! _Torene caught between squeaks, then: _Dragons good! Humans good! _She didn't catch much of the dolphin's next sentence, but it set Sara to laughing again.

"What did he say?" Marta asked.

"That us humans are far too serious, but luckily for us, our idea of _work_ is their idea of _fun_."

_Always want dolphins find things, _the heavily scarred dolphin – Kibby – said, before turning and splashing Sara with her flukes. She bobbed up again closer to the harbour wall, squeaking loudly. _I speak slow, you understand me. __Ship, yes? Ship that was here when Thread fell?_

Marta's face fell. "They were caught in it?"

Amadeus shook his head from side to side, human style. _In caaave! _he squeaked, slowly and emphatically._ Silly human! _

"The harbour cave's empty," Torene said. "We found some signs of recent use, but nothing more than that."

_Ship sailed_, Kibby said. _Not sure where it stopped, but eight-nine-ten tides later we heard engine._

_Heading south! _Amadeus added. _Not going home! Not going anywhere._

"They went _up_ the Channel?" Marta asked. "You're certain of it?"

Amadeus let out a long, stuttering whistle; Torene wasn't certain, but she suspected that the dolphin was laughing at them.

_Ship still there, silly human! _the dolphin said. _Stuck in shallows, sunrise side._ _Humans want find? Dolphins find! Dolphins know! _

And then, overcome by his own cleverness, the dolphin splashed all three of them.

* * *

><p>The dolphins might have known exactly where to find the<em> Lady Tethys<em>, but translating that knowledge into directions that a human or a dragon could follow was not an easy endeavour. It was well after noon when J'zey and Morlaith finally located the missing ship. It had come to rest amongst a mass of tumbled boulders, two hours' flight southwards along the Dorado coast. Its mast was still intact, but the mainsail had only been partially raised – or perhaps lowered; Torene couldn't tell – before being abandoned in a puddled heap on the deck. The hull looked to have taken some damage, and the tides had washed a pungent mess of bladderfronds over the ship's now heavily slanted deck. Against the backdrop of dragon-sized sandstone boulders, the contrast between the dark seaweed and the pale fabric of the sail had disguised the ship remarkably well. If it hadn't been low tide at the time, J'zey might never have spotted the ship at all.

While the rest of B'kar's wingmates scoured the local area for any signs of life, Torene, Marta, B'kar and J'zey clambered carefully over the rock-strewn sand towards the ship.

"HALLOOOO!" B'kar hollered as they drew close. They all fell quiet, but there was no response from on board. He stooped to pick up a large stone from the ground, then slammed it three times, hard, against the ship's hull.

"What-" Marta began, but B'kar quickly raised a hand to hush her.

"Shh." A few seconds later, he shrugged and shook his head. "Worth a try. I doubt there's anyone on board, but there's a good chance it might still be water-tight. Ship's log ought to tell us something, regardless of the state of the rest of the boat."

"Really?" Marta mused, grabbing hold of the rungs of the ladder mounted at the ship's stern. "I'll start with the hold, then," she said as she started climbing, her tone brooking no discussion. "Weyrwoman Torene, why don't you try to find the ship's log?"

"Sure." It was an obvious attempt at removing her from the scene, but Torene decided to let Marta get away with it...for a while. She looked back towards the cliffs, where the three dragons were all watching their riders with interest. _Noldrith, please ask B'kar to watch Marta for me?_

_I will, Rene, _the brown promptly replied.

Beside Torene, B'kar grinned. "Ship's log'll be in the Cap'n's cabin, 'Rene. Through the wheelhouse and down the steps. I'll help Marta check the hold."

"It shouldn't take-" Marta said from the top of the ladder, but B'kar was quick to interrupt her.

"I may have been a dragonrider for forty turns, but I still know my ships, Holder Marta! List like this, the cargo's like to have shifted, and four hands are far better than two. J'zey, you check the bow cabins. I'll holler if we need anything."

"Thank you, B'kar," Torene said. She started up the ladder, glad that only a few of the rungs were slicked with slime. _Well now, Allie!_ _I wonder what Marta's hiding?_

_Perhaps she is afraid of what she might find, _the queen replied_. I shall ask Brianth if M'hall has any ideas._

_Perhaps you're right. But she won't be leaving this ship with any secrets from me – not unless she means to _swim_ all the way home! _

Treading carefully over the slippery patches of stinking-bladderfrond – it really did merit the name – and the various rope and metal accoutrements of the ship's deck, Torene made her way towards the wheelhouse. Aside from the awkwardness of the ship's slight list – though really, it was a miracle that it was so close to being upright at all – the wheelhouse appeared to be in good order: its brightwork gleaming, and everything neatly stowed and in its proper place. Naomi Tillek had run a tight ship, it seemed. Moving from handhold to handhold, Torene worked her way across the sloping deck towards the short flight of steps. The captain's private quarters were only fractionally more spacious than a closet, and finding the ship's logbook took no time at all. Torene opened it up and scanned the final entries for anything of note. The ship had briefly become grounded in shallow water at one point during the last annotated week of its voyage, and Captain Tillek had noted in consequence that she'd be taking a firmer line with unscheduled stops in future – Torene wasn't familiar enough with the local area to know how any specific landmarks corresponded with the listed coordinates, but it had happened somewhere well to the west of its final location. The ship's engineer had made some repairs a few days later...ah, those coordinates were almost certainly Lockahatchee Harbour! And after that they'd-

"Hey, Rene! RENE!"

It was J'zey's voice, which surprised her. Had he found someone? "Coming!" Torene yelled back.

She placed the logbook back into its cubby and made her way quickly back out onto the main deck and then across to the steps that led down to the crew quarters. J'zey was waiting for her at the top, one hand held over his mouth and nose. "What is it?" she asked him.

The green rider lowered his hand. "There's a body down here."

"Tell me," she demanded.

"Last cabin on the left. A man, I think."

"You...think? Just the one?"

J'zey nodded. "Yeah. I checked the other cabins as well, just in case. I think he's been dead a while now."

Torene gave a quick toss of her head, gesturing for J'zey to make way. "Go tell the others," she said softly. Reluctantly, she made her way down the steps and along the corridor that ran between the cabins. The ceiling was low, and she had to stoop. The cabin J'zey had indicated was dimly lit – someone had nailed some canvas over the small room's equally tiny porthole – but her nose more than made up for the lack of light in identifying the reeking corpse slumped in the darkest corner of the cabin, beneath a swinging hammock. Torene yanked the canvas away from the window and cracked it open, then turned back to inspect the body. She crouched down beside it – him? – grateful beyond measure for Alaranth's constant presence in her mind. The skin was dark and marbled by decomposition, little more than a paper-thin shell over the bones that gave the corpse form. The floor all around was heavily stained, as were the dead man's clothes. Whatever had killed him, the answer was well beyond Torene's abilities to guess.

Footsteps sounded behind her. Torene glanced back, and saw B'kar and Marta on their way in, J'zey trailing a little way behind. She got to her feet, and promptly cracked her head on the low ceiling. Swearing to herself, she sat back down on a nearby chest. "What did you find in the hold, Marta?"

"Everything I expected, and none of what I'd hoped," Marta replied. Then, she caught sight of the body. "Oh, no!"

"Poor man," B'kar said. "Wonder what did for him?"

"Someone from a rival boat, turned pirate?" J'zey suggested.

The young rider sounded far too excited by the idea, but Torene supposed that chasing down criminal sailors _would_ make an appealing change of scene from threadfall for some people. No wonder_ that_ rumour had spread so well!

B'kar rolled his eyes. "Don't be ridiculous, lad. Besides, the hold's still got plenty of valuable cargo in it. Well, the plants might not be worth so much all dried-out like, but the tech parts are worth salvaging." He paused, staring grim-faced down at the body on the deck. "No people, though – alive _or_ dead."

"So what now?" J'zey asked.

"Sea burial's traditional for sailors," B'kar said, "but that man's no sailor."

"I meant, where do we look for _answers_?" J'zey shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. "That man isn't going to tell us much now, is he?"

"Says you!" B'kar countered. "He's telling me plenty from right here. One: he knew enough to get the sea-anchor up but couldn't manage the sails or steer worth a damn. Two: I'd say he was alone or incapacitated, else he'd have been able to shift that ruddy big lump of metal off the engine hatch. Three: that man-"

"_That man_ has a _name_," Marta broke in, her voice cracking. She took a hesitant step towards the body, and then, with a slight shake of her head, stopped where she was. She closed her eyes and drew in a shuddering breath. "Brin Sampson. That's Brin's belt he's wearing, anyway. Damn you, Brin! You had to prove me wrong, didn't you, and yourself as big a waste of space as the rest of them! What was so sharding wrong with you that you couldn't even send a damn _message_?"

"What if he did?" B'kar murmured, a slight smile pulling at the corners of his lips.

"What?"

"I said, 'what if he did?'" The brownrider crossed the room and reached into the tangle of clothes lying in the hammock suspended above the corpse, pulling out a slim, leather-wrapped object. "Three: this Brin Sampson of yours has left us his journal, I reckon."

"Let me see!" Marta said, stretching out a hand.

B'kar ignored her. "Here you go, Rene," he said as he got to his feet, passing the book quickly from one hand to the other, and then into her own, before Marta could come close enough to take it from him.

"There's better light and room for all of us to take a look outside," Torene decided. The others followed her back up the steps and into the fresh air again. It was still warm and muggy, but a pleasant breeze had blown up while they'd all been below...or maybe she was only noticing it now because she was so much more appreciative of it? Using the raised hatch of the main hold as an impromptu seat, Torene opened up the journal. With Marta leaning over her shoulder, she thumbed through to the last page of entries, and started to read the orderly lines of handwritten notes.

_07/09/41 – Longwood caverns empty of anything of interest. Weather worsening. Captain Tillek insists on heading west for better anchorage. Have persuaded her to allow us to search the old Cibola outpost tomorrow. Dale proving an excellent addition to the Brute Squad, but M's doubts over JT's usefulness are sadly accurate._  
><em> 0809/41 – Located Cibola Outpost after long day plagued by ship trouble. Outpost badly flooded. Surrounds severely thread-struck. Tillek ran us aground twice. Will proceed on foot tomorrow._  
><em>0909/41 – Trekked through dead marshes plagued by swarms of bitemes. Found some living greenery at last! Returned with two pallets-worth of marshfern and ai-root seedlings, now all potted and ready for transport, and_ Lady Tethys _properly afloat again. Sent queries home, regarding attempt to obtain medi-willow back on Ierne, and if Uppsala river tributaries or the bogs east of Lockahatchee Harbour were best bet._  
><em>1009/41 – Winds favoured Uppsala, but Uppsala is dead. No luck locating medi-willow, but nine wind-turbine blades and two hundred meters of cabling retrieved from the installation on the west cliffs, so not a complete loss! Ni's crew found a gold clutch nearby and marked it for later retrieval._  
><em> 1109/41 – Thread due by evening. No wind + slow voyage._ LT _suffered some damage when it grounded, Tillek says. Made safe harbour in Lockahatchee just in time. Would not recommend returning to Cibola at this time of year – everyone's bug bites have swollen, and several of Ni's are obv. infected._  
><em> 1209/41 –_ Lady Tethys_ remained in harbour for minor repairs to engine. Sent Jason, Brin, JT and Marieke – Ni still bedridden – to scour the bogs and third team plus rest of Brute Squad for R&R on beaches with the rest of Tillek's crew. My gang made the climb to Pei Pei Cavern. Mixed success: only one sack of joydust fungus before harvest interrupted by return of wild hogs. Delicious!_  
><em>1309/41 – Slow journey down coast to East Longwood. V. disappointed that Cap. T. let her crew overindulge. Surprised she claims otherwise, despite all evidence to contrary. Wind still poor to non-existent, but Tillek disinclined to use engine unless essential. Making most of delays by checking beaches. Six more clutches found, and three are new enough to ship north before hatching. Vote taken – we're camping out awaiting the hardest of them to hatch. Should be no more than two days._  
><em>1409/41 – Eleven firelizards Impressed. JT got none, then started fight with Big Sal, but unlikely to make that mistake again. Ni no longer malingering, but apparently his apathy was contagious. Nothing else of note. Too damn hot._  
><em> 1509/41 – Thank fuck for medi-willow. Not malingering after all. Tillek, three other crewmen, JT, Marieke, Kev and Dale all v. sick. Flu? Local Nasty? Ni prob. in best health of all. Stupidly left message-tube on board_ LT. _Tillek's Second Mate gone to retrieve it along with more meds._  
><em> 1609/41 – Naomi Tillek v. v. bad. Second Mate and skiff are missing. Firelizards can't find them. Tried to send idea-message north, but the fuckers either not interested or can't follow simple instructions. JT had to be restrained. Too hot. Several of team delusional. Suspect self included in that number. We may be seriously fucked._

After that, the neat handwriting changed to a jagged scrawl that meandered across a full third of the page. The last entry wasn't dated or signed, but Torene guessed that it was Brin Sampson's hand.

_Gunther was right, _it read. _Seriously fucked. Holies have mercy. I love you, Nick. Love you always._

"Holies have mercy," Marta breathed, echoing Sampson's words.

Torene took hold of one of Marta's hands. The Holder's eyes were haunted, and reddening with unshed tears. "I'm very sorry, Marta," Torene said. "But I don't think we're going to find any of them alive."

"No," Marta agreed in a small voice. "But at least we know where to look next."

"Back to the East Longwood coast," B'kar muttered. "B'ris's Wing's out that way, right, Rene?"

"Yes, I'll tell Gesilith right away. And then, I think, we should take Sampson's body up to the College for a proper autopsy."

Marta nodded. "Yes. Yes, we should do that. And the cargo will need-"

"To be quarantined for now, along with the rest of the ship," Torene said firmly. She held Marta's gaze until the Holder looked away. "B'kar, could you get the body ready for removal, please?"

"I'll cut some canvas," the brownrider said. "C'mon, J'zey."

Torene found Gesilith airborne: one of several dragons in a pack of males chasing green Enniolth high above the hills. She mercilessly claimed the bronze's attention for herself; B'ris might complain, but it was a Wingleader's lot to be available when needed. _Gesilith, it's Torene. I have a message for B'ris. For B'ris, yes, so please focus and listen. Come on, Gesilith! I know you can hear me._

With palpable reluctance, Gesilith stopped pretending that he couldn't. _This had better be important, _he sent, almost more man than dragon.

_More important to me than Enniolth is to you, especially if Tenaith is up there too. You know you don't have a hope of catching her, and the longer you chase her the more frustrated you'll end up. Pull out now, please...and I'll put in a good word for you with Rementh and Ivioth._

_Oh, all right! _ _What's the message?_

_Tell B'ris that we've found the missing ship, but only one of its crew. We're fairly certain the rest are on the East Longwood coast. Have your Wing start the search on these beaches, _she added, sending the bronze an image of the coastline in question,_ and_ _then work inland. They may have sought cover._

_We'll get on it._

Torene broke the contact then, leaving B'ris and his dragon to their shared frustration, but with no doubt that they'd do their duty just as well as always.

She came back to herself to find Marta staring thoughtfully back towards Ierne. "Did you want to come with me to the College, or would you rather join the search parties?" Torene asked.

"I can't do anything for Brin now," Marta said, her voice soft and slow. She turned to face Torene, then peered down into the darkness of the hold. "I'll help with the search. Can I impose on the Weyr to take me to Tillek Hold later? They ought to know what's happened to their ship and its crew, and I'd prefer to break the bad news in person if I can."

That was more like the Marta Torene knew. "Of course you can. Best we take the ship's log with us as well – I left it on the shelf in Tillek's cabin."

"I'll get it," Marta offered.

While she waited for the Holder to return, Torene reached out for Brianth's mind. Her weyrmate's bronze was lazing in the shallow sunny waters off Ierne's western coast, his rider apparently dozing on the golden sands a few lengths away. _M'hall's sleeping? _she asked.

_No._ Brianth lazily raised his head to look at the sky. _See? We're watching the races.__ I think Kyunth will win this one._

Torene rolled her eyes. _Fardling dragonriders! The first day in months they have a proper chance to relax, and what do they do?_

_Says the woman who hasn't stopped moving all day, M'hall says, _Brianth sent back. _What's the news on the ship?_

_Mixed. It's not going to sail anywhere any time soon, but it's more or less intact, with one dead Bitran on board. We're taking him to Fort for an autopsy, and then all four of us are going to have a damn good swim. And we know where to look for the rest of them now, too – B'ris is in the right area, so I set his Wing onto it – but from the sounds of it they all came down with the same sickness, possibly transmitted by bug bites, or bad water, or maybe just food poisoning from an iffy hog-roast._

_M'hall says to keep him informed, and not to worry too much. The Weyr's eating wherry today. But he'll warn L'win to cook it properly anyway._

_I'm not sure I have much appetite for anything right now, _Torene thought.

_All the more reason to get back here as soon as you can, _Brianth replied. _You need a rest, Rene. You need to spend some time with my M'hall. Come here to swim. The races are nearly done, and the other riders and dragons are a whole two coves away._

_Oh they _are_, are they?_

_Weyrleader's prerogative, M'hall says. He asks you to pass on his condolences to the Holder, and as soon as you're done with the ship business to 'get your arse over here'. And he says he'll make it an order if he has to._

_Oh, _will_ he?_

_Does he need to?_

Torene smiled. _Of course not. Thanks, Brianth. _The pair of them always knew when and how to give her spirits a lift.

_You're still worrying, Rene,_ Alaranth noted.

Brianth was quick to agree. _Yes, she is. Rene, you should think of all the good things we've achieved today, not of the problems that couldn't ever have been solved._

That was an uncommonly wise idea for Brianth to come out with. _Did M'hall say that, or you?_

_Me. M'hall's thinking of all the good things he hasn't had a chance to do. Yet._

Torene hurriedly stifled her laughter, then turned to check that no-one had heard her. Marta would be back at any moment, and it wouldn't have been at all appropriate. _Tell him to hold that thought, _she sent as she pushed herself up from the covered hatch of the _Lady Tethys_' hold. They might have salvaged little more than sad tidings from the wreck, but the day wasn't over yet, and Torene intended to make the most of it.

* * *

><p><em>Author's Note:<em> _I'm pretty certain that Sallah Telgar wasn't the only person to make good (or bad) use of Pei Pei Ting's aphrodisiac. That, and the two named dolphins, are both pulled directly from canon, but I've taken liberties with the rest of the local flora._

_Interestingly (to me, anyway - probably not to anyone else!) the maps suggest that there's some major geographical changes in the Cibola region between the first and ninth Passes - a huge chunk of it gets swallowed by the sea. I've interpreted that as a mixture of earthquakes/fault slippages and the area being low-lying in the first place._


	3. The falcon cannot hear the falconer

_First Pass, 15.10.41  
>Threadfall over the Benden River, and approaching Bitra Hold<em>

Winter in the north-east invariably brought three things to the Weyr: snow, crackdust and more headcolds than you could keep track of. That year, with Turnover still the best part of several months away, two of the three had arrived early. Unfortunately, the cold air that had brought the snow in from the west had lost its battle against the warmer currents moving north from the sea-warmed Nerat coast all too quickly. Sleet and rain had followed the snow, but not nearly enough of it to drown Thread in the air.

Instead, the Weyr was drowning in mucus.

Keeping her eyes on sky all around and her mind on the Wings above, Torene deftly stowed her flamethrower wand beside her thigh, then fished in her pocket for her third hanky of the day. After emptying her sinuses as well as she could manage, she swapped hanky for water flask and gulped the last of the contents down.

_Better?_ Alaranth asked.

_Much. Don't want to sneeze _between_, do I? _Torene had tried to keep her thoughts light-hearted, but her queen knew her far too well to let her get away with the deception.

_Hmph. I think I shall ask Rementh to fly the burrow-sweep today, Rene, _Alaranth sent firmly_. And as soon as we have time to spare, Findreth will send a weyrling with some more water for you._

_Oh, Allie! Very well, but- _Torene broke off mid-thought, sensing a minor mishap overhead. _But not yet. We go east first, Allie, almost all the way to the trailing edge. Suoth just mis-flamed, and his Wing needs him to stay in position._

_I see it, _Alaranth said, banking towards the distant, tumbling length of silver_._ _And we have enough time to fly straight._

_No reason not to, I suppose, _Torene agreed_. _Her head was feeling stuffy enough that she was glad to avoid _between_ing if she could._ I'll check in with Elliath as soon as the trailing edge Wings have made their turn. They're looking very sloppy, and I'm picking up a lot of dulled reactions...not that my own are all that much better._

The Weyr was flying Wing-light that day – M'hall had grounded the most badly afflicted riders, as well as those that he knew were easily distracted – but if he'd left the threadfighting to the riders in perfect health, there'd barely have been a dragon in the sky at all, not even his own. As it was, the number of stray threads getting past the Wings was noticeably higher than usual. With that in mind, Torene had delegated leadership of the queens' Wing to Uloa and Elliath: Uloa had as good an eye as she did for prioritising which ones to chase first, and was in better health than most of the Weyr. It also left Torene free to concentrate her own talents where they were needed most.

Beyond the dragons in their own Wing, the fighting dragons couldn't be expected to keep track of who was where at any given time, but to Torene the knowledge was completely instinctive. She found herself frequently called upon to relay messages: between the Wings, to the reserves back at the Weyr, to the older weyrlings on firestone duty, and to the dragons stationed with the groundcrews at various points along the Fall's corridor. On a good day, the Weyr's full complement of dragons would return from Threadfall safe and well, but accidents did happen, and the ability to respond swiftly to dragons in distress was by far the most useful aspect of her gift. The rest of the time, she simply listened: picking up snatches of conversation and bursts of sensation almost at random. She rarely focused her attention on any individual dragonpair – not unless they were obviously struggling in some way – but, taken together, all of the disparate bits and pieces usually provided a very accurate impression of the state of the Wings.

Well, there was no doubting her earlier assessment, Torene decided, sensing a sudden burst of frustration from multiple dragons in N'klas' Wing, and the pain of a strained wing muscle from Chonth. _Another thread coming our way, Allie, _she told her queen, before reaching out for the mind of N'klas' bronze. _Petrath, we're well placed down here. Leave that one to me, but please don't let any more through for a while?_

_They'd better not!_

Brianth, of course. Torene grinned to herself as she readied her flamethrower. _Nothing we can't handle, Brianth dear_, _but tell M'hall that N'klas is struggling to coordinate his own Wing today, let alone the whole trailing Flight. Shells, we've seen some bad winters over the years, but-_

_M'hall knows. The Wings do not fight well today. M'hall also says you should call on the reserves if you're hard pressed._

_No, no, we're fine. Myrinth and Greteth should be back with the Queens' Wing soon; I'll ask Elliath to assign one of them our way, as soon as I've dealt with this. _Torene took a deep breath, concentrating hard on the nearer of the two falling threads as it twisted in the air. If she got it wrong, Alaranth wouldn't have time to get them to their second target. _Take us in tight, Allie. I'll get it on a wide burst. There! We're clear!_

She'd scarcely finished the thought before Alaranth banked into an uncomfortably fast and steep descent that set Torene's sinuses pounding_. We still have time?_ she asked her queen.

_If I'm quick. Sorry!_

By the time she'd finished flaming the second stray thread to ash, Torene's nose was streaming again. Unfortunately, she already had a new target to concern herself with, so had to resort to wiping the worst of the mess off her face on the sleeve of her coat. While Alaranth worked her way back across the sky, Torene used the time to relay the less urgent messages that she hadn't already dealt with: informing L'ren's Nalth that brown Jorrith had arrived safely back at the Weyr, but that his score _was_ bad enough to keep him out of the rest of the Fall; passing on the details of the next two weyrling pairs on resupply duty to Polenth; warning Petrath that the second-shift bluerider who'd let the thread slip past him would have been better off staying in bed if his head was hurting as much as Gindrith seemed to think, and that green Brendath couldn't cover their mistakes much longer at the rate her flame was fading. Then, she stretched her mind back towards the queens' Wing, where Elliath, Rementh and green Chiwoth were busy with a particularly nasty half-charred clump. She waited for them to finish before bespeaking Uloa's queen. _You don't need us back yet, do you, Elliath? I've only the one loose thread to flame, but I don't like the feel of the Wings at this end of the Fall. Brianth and M'hall are aware._

_No, _Elliath replied, _Uloa agrees that it's be__st if you s__tay in your current zone. All is under control here. Rementh flies the north sweep, and Ivioth's Wei is helping the Benden groundcrews with a burrow before flying ahead to check in with Bitra's. We sent Nasseeth and Jinreth forward,_ the queen added, naming the two other greens currently flying with the Queens' Wing_, but I will send Myrinth to join you as soon as she and Greteth return from the Weyr._

_Thank you, Elliath._

Myrinth arrived shortly after Torene had finished flaming her last thread. The Wings overhead were performing little better than they had been earlier – Torene had witnessed four close calls in the space of as many minutes – but, fortunately, the Threads were compensating by falling less densely. Trusting Alaranth to keep watch for a while, Torene directed Myrinth to stand ready for any new strays, located her increasingly repellent hanky, then touched the mind of the Weyrlingmaster's brown. _Findreth? Is that water delivery still an option?_

_Of course, Weyrwoman! Scavith and F'derick are on their way._

_Wonderful! _Torene stretched out her arms behind her and flexed her feet as well as she could inside her boots. They were aching a little more than they usually did after three and a half hours of threadfighting, and she promised herself a warm bath as soon as Thread was safely dealt with. Judging by the chatter she was picking up from N'klas and S'verin's Wings – and M'hall's, too, close to the leading edge – she was far from the only rider feeling that way.

Alaranth rumbled with concern. _You _are _feeling worse, aren't you?_

_Only a little, _Torene thought back, just as blue Scavith appeared in the sky a dragonlength off Alaranth's left wing. _A drink will help, I'm sure. _She beckoned the weyrling closer, then stretched out her arms as F'derick tossed the heavy leather flask towards her...only to find her hands closing on empty air. "Shit!" she swore, grabbing for the fluttering shoulder strap just before the flask could fall completely out of reach.

_It's not just you, Rene. _

Torene waved F'derick away and hauled herself back upright with a sigh. _No, I know. I think M'hall's even worse than I am – Brianth's covering up for him pretty well, but I can tell that he's doing it. Shaffit, he could easily have left leaving the threadfighting to D'vid and Polenth, and his own Wing to Z'der, but-_

_But he's M'hall, and M'hall doesn't ask other riders to do what he won't._

_Exactly. He might be flying with a stinking cold today, but _someone_ has to do it, and the ones who aren't fighting have it worse. The whole Trailing Flight's suffering, and- _Torene broke off mid-thought as a shock of panicked, indescribable pain surged through her consciousness. _Alaranth, TENAITH!_

_He's...he's gone! But they were safe at the Weyr! They didn't even fight today!_

_Back to the Weyr, Allie! _Torene swiftly visualised the jagged curve of the Weyr's rim, holding it firm in her mind through the short passage _between. _Only after she and Alaranth had reemerged did she stretch her mind back to the fighting Wings. _Something's happened to S'bas,_ she told Brianth, Elliath and Myrinth as one. _Might mean trouble. I'm investigating._

Alaranth's descent to the bowl was steep and fast, and her landing hard. Torene swore under her breath as the impact set her cheekbones throbbing, bracing herself for more of the same as she swung herself down from Alaranth's neck.

_Tenaith went _between_ from his ledge, _the queen informed her, sharing a fractured visual pulled together from the minds of several different dragons who'd witnessed the blue's suicide.

_S'bas was in his weyr?_

_I don't know. They don't think so, but none of the dragons have seen Tenaith's rider. No-one knows what happened to him._

Lacking any better options, Torene sprinted for the entrance to Benden's Lower Caverns. S'bas might have been grounded from threadfighting – along with fifty-odd other riders – but none of them had been so sick as to be confined to the infirmary...and S'bas was definitely the social type. Besides, all of the medics and most of the weyrfolk were out in the bowl, busily tending to the Weyr's casualties. If he'd been out helping them, _someone _would know something.

The main cavern was almost entirely deserted. The first person she ran into – almost literally – was her own son, Liam, who was burdened with a large basket filled to the brim with fresh bandaging, but was still managing to move just as fast as she was. "Sorry, Rene!" he yelled as he dodged through the small gap between her and the nearest trestle table.

"Wait, Liam!"

"Derren needs this right away!" he called back over his shoulder. "Be with you in five?"

"Liam!" she repeated more insistently.

He slewed to a halt and turned to face her, his knuckles whitening as he tightened his grip on his basket. "It's not Da, is it, or Katja?"

Torene shook her head. "I'm looking for S'bas. Tenaith just suicided, and we don't know why."

Liam sank down on the nearest bench with a sigh. "Jays, Ma! I heard the keening, but when you stopped me like that... wait, S'bas? I saw him in the washrooms, not half an hour back."

"How did he look?"

"Aw, come on! I don't pay _that _much attention to the other blokes!"

Perhaps that _had _been a bit much to ask. "No, no. Thanks, Liam, I'll check there first."

But Torene was spared the need: just rounding the corner into the main cavern was a small group of four weyrfolk, carrying the body of a fifth on a makeshift stretcher.

The man on the stretcher was S'bas, and he was very much alive.

* * *

><p>Slowly but surely, the bluerider's frenzied spasms ebbed away to stillness.<p>

"I think he's under, now," Liam said. "Doc?"

At the sink, Derren quickly finished scrubbing his hands then closed the faucet with his elbow. "Ought to be after that much fellis. How're his vitals?"

"No change – temp and BP both way too high, but at least they've not gone any higher. Pupils are blown now, but that's the drugs."

"Right. Make him as comfortable as you can, then get back out to the Bowl. Or...what's next?" The medic glanced at the chalkboard and nodded grimly to himself. "Forget the Bowl. You can scrub up and assist me with Lynne's amputation."

"Sure," Liam said as he loosened the straps across S'bas' chest. He caught Torene's eye, and she quickly followed suit with the ones across the unfortunate rider's thighs.

"And you're sure it's meningitis?" Torene asked before Derren could head back into the surgery. "There's still no rash..."

"High fever, headache, confusion. Light aversion too, if what Ben said about him hiding in a dark corner was true, and the Weyr's collective cold on top of the lot. Fast enough collapse to shock his dragon _between_."

"He might not be the only one," Liam mused as he hung his jacket on a peg. "Grace and J'zey were complaining about headaches, too, and there was a long queue for the dispensary this morning."

"Don't borrow trouble you don't need, Liam," Derren said kindly. "A Weyr-wide cold's nothing to worry about, and we can't be babysitting riders with snotty noses and headaches when we've got Thread injuries coming in!" He waved Liam into the surgery ahead of him, pausing to look back at Torene, grave faced, as he reached the doorway. "Though that might change. I very much hope it doesn't, but...keep me informed, Weyrwoman. I'll assemble a team to check everyone over as soon as the Wings return. And maybe give you all a precautionary shot as well."

"Thank you, Derren." Torene made her way quietly out of the infirmary, deep in thought. As much as she trusted the medic's judgement, something about S'bas' collapse still didn't sit right with her. She reached for Brianth's mind, but the bronze was too preoccupied with flaming to notice her immediately.

_Rene?_ the bronze said at last, his mind feeling as weary as Torene had ever known.

_I'm just leaving the infirmary, _she told him_. S'bas is very ill. Meningitis, Derren thinks, and he'll probably have us all on antibiotics later, just in case. He doesn't think anyone else is affected, but tell M'hall to watch for riders reporting headaches._

Brianth's mind coloured with a sense of bleak resignation as he finally let slip what his rider was feeling. _M'hall knows all about the headaches, Rene._

_Shaffit, Brianth!_

_He says it's not _that _bad. Fall's almost over now: only another forty minutes or so._

_And how many threads can fall in forty minutes, Brianth? How many times over can he get you both killed?_

_We're managing, Rene. _And then her weyrmate's bronze broke the link, returning his full attention to the fight.

_Best we get back, too, _Torene told Alaranth. Her queen had gone to wait for her beside the most sorely injured dragons, doing her bit to ease the pains that numbweed couldn't reach. _Do they need a queen right now? I'll call Ivioth back if they do, but I think we're needed back with the fighting Wings._

_Yes, I think that would be wise._

Torene felt for the young queen's mind, but there was no sign of her along the Bitran borders. _That's odd, Allie._ She tried again, putting more strength into her call. _Ivioth!_

_Weyrwoman?_

_Where are...you're heading for Bitra Hold? Why?_

_The Bitran groundcrews, _Ivioth sent back_. They're not where they should be. My Wei thought we should fly on to the Hold, to look for them and find out why they're missing, so that's what we did. But we haven't seen anyone at all. We're nearly there now. Wei says they're flying flags, and she thinks that one is the flag that means sickness, and the other flag is the one that asks for help, but we're not close enough to be sure._

Wei might not be sure, but Torene was. Bitra was flying the contagion flag. There was sickness at _Bitra_, too.

With a deep sense of dread growing in the pit of her stomach, Torene stopped and looked around the bowl. There were a number of grounded riders helping out with the dragonhealers or bagging up the last spare sacks of firestone for the Weyrling Wing...but almost none of them flew with M'hall, B'ris, S'verin or N'klas. And as for the dozen or so who did, most of them hadn't flown south with their wingmates, and the remainder _really_ weren't looking their best. Poor L'win was the nearest, barely more than a dragonlength away, and he looked like he was _shaking _beneath the blanket he was clutching to himself. Torene jogged over and dropped to a crouch beside him. "L'win?" she asked, pressing the back of her hand against his forehead.

The greenrider groaned and brushed her hand away weakly, but Torene had already learned enough. He was burning up! _Narranath!_

She found the green's mind easily enough, but Narranath's racing thoughts were tightly focused on her rider and almost incomprehensible.

_I mustn't worry – he's only resting – only resting – must keep working – help the healers – healers help him – (worry!) – mustn't worry – help him – resting, leave me – help him – let him help – please let me rest – don't leave – don't leave me – leave me – (worry!) – help him!_

L'win was delirious, clinging to his dragon's mind for support, flooding it with his own confusion. He looked close to collapse...but with Narranath trapped into that state of mind...

_You think the same thing happened to Tenaith? _Alaranth asked.

_I do,_ Torene thought back grimly. _Oh Allie, Allie, Allie! This is _bad! _Very, _very_ bad!_

Whatever S'bas was suffering from, so was L'win, and who knew how many other riders. Bitra Hold had it too, and sickness could rip through a Hold as fast as burrowing thread. Something on Ierne had infected them, something bad enough to be _deadly_...but they didn't have a clue what its mortality rate was, how many had caught it, or even how contagious it might be! Her eyes and nose stinging, Torene brought up her arm just in time to shield L'win from yet another sneeze. Shaffit, she might have caught it herself... and, as much as she wished to, she couldn't bring herself to doubt the knowledge that M'hall almost certainly had.

Guts churning, Torene cast her thoughts south-west, towards where the Wings were fighting, touching the minds of dozens of dragons at once, as lightly as she dared. She felt for signs of strain or alarm or concern, of dragons fighting with less guidance from their riders than usual, of dragons lending some of their own mental strength to block their riders' discomfort. Torene sifted, searched, found...and only then did she choose to identify the dragonpairs in question. Dragonpairs from four of the Weyr's twelve Wings...the four that had flown south to Ierne.

Alaranth was quick to offer succour, enfolding her in a supportive mental embrace even as she flew the short distance to her rider. _We cannot change what is, Rene. We can only act. Liam will bring the doctor to care for Narranath's rider, and I've told all the other dragons who did not go to fight Thread that their riders must report in now._

And for the rest of their Wings, there was really only one good answer. _We need to call them _all_ back, Allie._

_Yes._

_They'll need to be checked over, quarantined if necessary..._

_The doctors will know what to do._

_M'hall's not going to like this._

_M'hall doesn't need to like it._

_No,_ Torene agreed with a sigh. She got to her feet and moved to stand beside her queen, pressing face and both hands against the warm hide of Alaranth's chest. Then, she reached out for Brianth once again. _Brianth, listen to me! _she thought with all the strength she had._ The Wings that went to Ierne. M'hall needs to send them back to the Weyr RIGHT NOW!_

_We need to _what_? _The tone of the dragon's thoughts made it quite clear how close he was to refusing her request outright. _ Thread is falling, Rene! We have to flame it until it stops, and M'hall says the same._

Torene wasn't having any of it. _We've got a contagion on our hands back here, Brianth, and-_

_And we have falling threads!_

_Don't argue, shard it, just DO IT!_

Brianth's mind hardened under her touch. _M'hall says: I can last long enough to get the job done, shaffit! We _will_ come back to the Weyr, as you wish...but not yet. _And then the bronze pushed her away again.

"_Brianth!" _Torene howled in frustration. _Oh, help me tell them, Allie! Petrath, Gesilith, Oaxalth, hear me now! YOU MUST COME BACK IMMEDIATELY! Brianth, don't you dare ignore me! COME HOME NOW! _

_No, _Brianth sent back firmly. _We stay. But I _will_ send home the others, and Polenth and D'vid will take command._

As far as compromises went, it wasn't ideal...but the fall _was _nearly over. _You'll stay at the leading edge? _M'hall's Wing would return all the sooner, that way.

Reluctantly, the bronze agreed.

_And let Z'bar take charge of your Wing?_

_Z'bar and Fergoth are leaving now. Z'bar's feeling worse than M'hall is._

_Oh. Stay strong then, Brianth; I'll be back with you as soon as I can._

Torene sent word to the dragons of the queens' Wing to keep a close eye on him in her absence, then readied herself to explain things to the riders and dragons soon to return to the Weyr. And shells, something should be done about Bitra, too! _Ivioth? _Torene sent swiftly. _I want you and Wei to head for the College, and tell them we have a possible medical crisis on our hands here, and that there's_ definitely_ one at Bitra. And then go to Fort, and tell the Weyrleaders there._

That done, Torene looked back to the skies. N'klas' Wing was the first to return, emerging from _between_ a little way south of the Watch Dragon's perch. But there were three large gaps in their ranks, gaps that couldn't be explained away by the dragons that hadn't fought at all, gaps that could have only one terrible, hideous meaning._"No!_" Torene gasped as the Weyr's dragons started keening: for Plydath, for Juth, and for Cressianth, lost on their way home to the Weyr. Choking back her sobs, and desperate to avert yet more deaths, Torene reached out for Gesilith's and Oaxalth's minds. Gesilith and his Wing were already _between_, but Oaxalth was still readying his to jump. Alaranth with her, she ordered him to hold. _Wait, Oaxalth! You mustn't return in formation. The sick riders may be too confused to cope. They need to concentrate, and come back on their own visuals, in their own time._

_We understand, Weyrwoman, _Oaxalth replied. _Orders changed._

B'ris' Wing re-appeared above the Weyr in an even worse state than N'klas': his brown wingsecond and every last one of the seven dragonpairs that usually flew off Krenth's left flank were missing. The cries of the grieving dragons intensified, Alaranth's included, the noise reverberating off the stone and throbbing through Torene's body. But, one by one and two by two, all of the dragons of S'verin's Wing trickled back to the Weyr safely, Oaxalth last of all. Only then did she think to wonder where Z'bar and Fergoth had got to? Had they, too, been lost?

_There,_ Alaranth supplied, looking towards the infirmary. _He came in very low. He cannot hear his Z'bar!_

_Quickly then, let's go. We can help him with that, I hope._

Torene had hoped to return to the queens' Wing for the remainder of the fall – with the Weyr's fighting strength depleted by more than a quarter, she'd known that her talents would be more needed than ever – but as soon as she'd finished reassuring Fergoth that Z'bar was alive and as well looked after as anyone could be in that state, she found herself doing much the same thing for Dinth and Morlaith, and for Narranath all over again, whose insidious panic was proving as infectious and potentially just as deadly as any contagion. It was rapidly becoming clear that although not all of the riders of the three Wings in question were sickening, of those that were, some were in a very bad way indeed.

Torene stayed outside the infirmary, as close to the most panicked dragons as possible. The riders of the three Wings she'd called back soon made a long snaking line, shuffling and shifting as Liam and two of the other medical trainees ran triage, pulling the worst afflicted riders out of the queue to be seen ahead of their peers. A handful of extremely feverish riders were brought down from their weyrs, while those still inside the Lower Caverns were apparently being checked over and treated there. And, all the while, there was a steady influx of threadfall injuries: char-burns, strains and scores of varying severity.

"TORENE!"

Torene turned to see Weyrleader Sean jogging towards her, Persephone Force hurrying along beside him. She'd been so busy dealing with dragons and riders on the ground that she hadn't even been aware of Carenath's arrival, but she couldn't have been happier to see either him or Seph Force, who was probably the most gifted doctor on all of Pern. "Sean! Seph!"

Dr Force gave her a wordless salute as she continued on towards the infirmary, but Sean slowed to a stop beside her, obviously concerned, but also equally determined to set whatever had gone wrong to rights again. Even after so many years as an independent Weyrwoman, Torene couldn't help but feel that she'd let him down. Her own authority could never compete with Sean Connell's utter dedication to the well-being of the dragons of Pern.

"What's happening, Weyrwoman?" he asked brusquely.

"Widespread contagion, almost certainly picked up from our excursion to Ierne two days back," she began. "At least thirty or forty percent of those exposed are symptomatic, but Derren may have a better guess than me by now. Very high fever, headache, light aversion and delirium. Several riders have completely collapsed, and I'm sorry to say that we've lost a dragon to that... and several other pairs from jumping _between _too confused to make it out again. The dragons are panicked, Sean, and I can't say I blame them!"

He took her by the shoulders and gave her a gentle squeeze. "They'd be worse without your help, Rene. Carenath says he can feel what you're doing. _Don't_ stop."

"I don't intend to!"

"And the unaffected Wings are still fighting?"

"Yes...and M'hall's."

Sean closed his eyes, his lips tightening. "M'hall has it too, then," he murmured, and Torene felt Carenath's concern spiking as the bronze sent word back to Faranth at Fort.

"Brianth will look after him," she said, hoping with all of her heart that she was right.

"How much longer do they have to fight?" Sean asked.

"They must be down to the last few minutes by now." _Allie? _she prompted, reluctant to spread her attention any more thinly than it already was.

_Brianth is dismissing the Wing now._

"Alaranth says they're on their way back."

M'hall's Wing returned to the Weyr in much the same fashion as S'verin's. Torene counted each new arrival in, anxious to know if – and by how much – M'hall had worsened. And then, at last, there was Brianth, gliding swiftly and smoothly down to the ground. M'hall unbuckled his straps and more slid than dropped to the ground. He took two staggering steps towards her and Sean before swaying back against Brianth for support.

_I will look after the others, _Alaranth said, lifting the burden of half a dozen fretting draconic minds from Torene's.

Toreneraced to M'hall's side, outpacing his father by several seconds. "M'hall!" She tugged his goggles aside, then loosened the chin-strap of his helmet and eased it off his head. Beneath it, his tightly curled red hair was slicked darkly to his scalp, and the skin of his forehead was terrifyingly hot. His eyes were screwed tightly closed. "M'hall?" she repeated, and he cracked them open into slits.

"Rene," he whispered.

_He hurts, Rene! _Brianth said. _He hurts, and he's starting to feel very afraid!_

Beside Torene, Sean swore loudly. "Shaffit, Mihall! What the hell kind of example do you think you're setting, fighting in that state!"

"Wasn' so bad...not so..." M'hall slurred, before trailing off into a pained groan.

Sean quickly slipped an arm beneath one of M'hall's, barely in time to keep his son on his feet.

"Infirmary, NOW!" Torene insisted, supporting her weyrmate from his other side. _We have him_, she told Brianth. _The doctors will take care of him, but I need you to be strong, and brave_, she added, knowing that the other dragons would look to his example over the next few hours just as much as they ever did during threadfall.

_I will try,_ Brianth thought back. His worry for his rider was deep and desperate, but Torene could tell that the bronze was reining it in as well as he could, no matter the cost to himself.

"Fast," M'hall gasped. "Ah, fuck, it's fast. Can't think. Hurts so bad. Brianth, oh, _Brianth_!"

"Quickly!" Sean said, picking up the pace.

"Stay with us, M'hall, we're nearly there!" Ahead of Torene, the crowd of people around the infirmary's entrance parted. Someone yelled for a doctor.

"Rene," M'hall breathed, as the last of the strength in his own legs deserted him, throwing both Torene and Sean off-stride.

Head hanging, he slumped limply between their arms, while behind them all Brianth gave voice to a heartbreaking, despairing cry.

* * *

><p><em>AN: Thanks for reading, everyone. Wendums, I hope that reading a threadfighting chapter right after noting your enjoyment of its absence wasn't too much of a chore! ;-) <em>

_Plot-wise...for all that 9th-Pass F'lar is thrilled to have a HAD on his hands in Lessa, we don't actually see her doing all that much. Probably because we never see a great deal of Threadfall, either... Anyway, one thing I wanted to explore in this story is how the advantages (and disadvantages) of being able to hear all dragons play out in the types of situation that dragonriders are exposed to on a day to day basis...and also what might during rarer, Plot-driven events._

_As always, please feel free to comment._


	4. Things fall apart the centre cannot hold

_Present Pass 18.10.41-22.10.41  
>Benden Weyr<em>

Torene gazed down at her weyrmate's face, and tried to imagine that M'hall was merely sleeping. That she could reach out, lightly caress the line of his jaw, and feel him rouse to her touch, just as he'd done on Ierne. That she might see the slightest hint of a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth before he brought up a hand of his own to trap her fingers against his lips, or to tangle in her curls and draw her close enough for him to kiss her. That, when the drugs wore off, the fever-driven delirium that haunted poor, poor Brianth even now would be gone, vanishing into nothing like a bad dream banished by the dawn.

She turned away from him long enough to sneeze into her hanky, then sighed softly and closed her aching eyes. Katja and Tonja had come to sit with their father at various times throughout the day, and Liam was constantly in and out, but Torene hadn't left the infirmary for more than half an hour at a time since M'hall's collapse. She certainly hadn't slept: the dragons needed her far too much for that. While the doctors and nurses had tended to the stricken humans, Torene had attended to the needs of their lifemates: all one hundred and seven of them. The first day had been utter chaos: riders dropping like flies, their dragons too distressed to think straight, waves of fear and panic rippling through the Weyr faster than Torene and the queens could suppress them. Some of the riders had become so agitated or aggressive that they'd had to be sedated right away, but in Torene's opinion those had been the better patients, the ones who were expressing their mental confusion outwards rather than burying it with their dragons. It was the riders who'd sickened quietly – the ones like L'win – who'd caused her the most trouble. There'd been no further deaths since the loss of the dragons from B'ris and N'klas's Wings, but it had been a very near thing at times: several dragons had been pushed beyond breaking point by sudden deteriorations in their riders' conditions, and had had to be forcibly restrained by the queens before they could go the same way as Tenaith. Sedation had helped a _lot_ in that respect...but only to a point. With nine queens to aid her – Benden's six, and one each from Telgar, Fort and Ista – she'd rarely had to juggle the needs of more than half a dozen dragons at a time. Unfortunately, with the dragons suffering with the stress of desperately sick, delirious riders, the support of one or more queens wasn't always enough. Sometimes, it seemed that only _human_ contact would do. There were a handful of riders who'd been weyrmated for so long that they could reliably hear and bespeak their partner's dragon, but that still left her with over a hundred other dragons to worry about...and until their riders' health improved, she alone could help them.

Riath was asleep, at last, but Dannikath's mind still felt very, very troubled. Fianth and Petrath were both wide awake, but amenable to the distraction of conversation with Julie's Rementh. The others were in varying states of fear and unease, but on the whole their worries were tightly held, and their attention directed solely towards their riders – much as Brianth's was, really. The bronze's anxiety wasn't actually any worse than that of the other dragons partnered to sick riders, but after more than twenty years as Alaranth's mate she couldn't help but sense him almost as clearly as she could Allie. And right now, as tired as she was, it would be all too easy to let some of his fears slip through to the other dragons who needed her.

Torene sent a wordless wave of reassurance towards Dannikath, Tegwenth, Jormath, and the others, then tightened her thoughts enough to bespeak M'hall's bronze privately. _Brianth? Try to let go a little, just enough to rest. _

_But he hurts, Rene! He hurts and he feels so wrong. I can't!_

The bronze's mind was as weary as her own, but no less stubborn than usual._ He's sleeping, Brianth, very, very deeply. What you sense...it's just a memory. A bad one, yes, but nothing more than that. M'hall can't feel a thing right now, I promise you. You need to be strong for him. You need to sleep. I know it's difficult, but you have to try. Please. For me?_

_Oh, Rene! He feels so far away! _

_I know, Brianth. I know. But I'm right here with him. I'm here for you both._

The brief hours that she and M'hall had spent alone together on Ierne were still bitterly fresh in Torene's memory. It had been growing late, Benden-time, when she and Alaranth had finally got back to the island. Leaving the other riders to their own pursuits, she and M'hall had walked for a klick or more along the coast, arm-in arm, in a companionable silence that neither one of them had been willing to break until they had to. Even with everything else that had happened that day, the chance to set all of their problems aside – albeit briefly – wasn't one to squander lightly. Certain of their solitude, they'd made love in the shade of the low cliffs, beneath a steady fall of scented petals from a small, struggling Ging tree growing incongruously out from a cleft in the rocks. M'hall had swum again, after, while Torene had lounged lazily in the gentler waters of a tide-pool, letting the hot sun and the lapping warmth of the water do what they could to leach away the ever-present fatigue of over twenty turns of leading a Weyr against thread, and the worries that constantly prickled at her mind. Every once in a while, she'd catch a glimpse of Alaranth or Brianth, high, high over head. The dragons had both had their fill of the coast by then, and had spent the time coasting on the thermals rising up from the hills for a while before settling down in the sunlight beside the ruined watchtower on top of Beacon Hill.

Eventually, the rising tide and the strength of the sun had driven her back to her blanket in the shade. M'hall had followed her out of the water, and shortly afterwards had fallen asleep with his head in her lap. They both worked themselves hard, and M'hall had always been able to manage on enviably few hours of sleep each night, so opportunities to observe her weyrmate at rest were few and far between. Seeing M'hall as relaxed as he'd been that day had been a rare and precious gift, and she'd known the added rest would do him a world of good.

Torene gazed down at her weyrmate's face, slack and unresponsive. _Here, _she thought to Brianth, as she stretched out her hand and traced one finger lightly along the side of M'hall's cheek. The gingery stubble beneath her fingertip had softened noticeably since morning, now only prickling when she moved against the grain. It was an unfamiliar, deeply unsettling sensation: an unequivocal reminder of how much time had passed since M'hall's collapse. Three days. Three full days, M'hall had been lying like this, his fever raging just as high and as hard as that of any other of the hundred and fifteen people who'd succumbed to the contagion. Whatever was causing the sickness – and with the results of the lumbar punctures inconclusive, it was anyone's guess as to whether a virus, bacterium or local parasite was to blame – no amount of anti-inflammatories, anti-virals or anti-biotics seemed to confer much in the way of improvement to the sick riders' conditions. The fevers seemed to have stabilised at a level that, although extremely high, was no longer dangerously so, but the underlying encephalitis had proved to be much more intractable. The infirmary had been filled to capacity, and the three adjacent storage caverns that had been hastily converted into medical wards weren't far behind. Three long, desperate days, and if there hadn't been any new cases since N'klas had been brought into the infirmary, swearing and raving, shortly before noon on the second day...well, no-one was getting any better, either.

She quickly moved her hand lower, bringing it to rest on M'hall's chest. Clearing her thoughts, she concentrated on the steady rise and fall of his ribs, and the beat of his heart within them. _He's sleeping, Brianth. See? He's sleeping now, and all will be well when he wakes. _

_Thank you, Rene._

Torene stayed in light, close contact with the bronze, breathing slowly and in tandem with M'hall, while Brianth's fears ebbed back down to a more manageable level. There wasn't much shape to the dragon's thoughts beyond his love and concern for M'hall, but even that lost form as the bronze drifted slowly into sleep.

When she opened her eyes again, she found Liam sitting across from her on the opposite side of his father's bed. "Hey, Ma," he said.

"Oh! I didn't hear you come in!" Torene glanced quickly around the dimly lit infirmary, checking to see who else was up and about. On the far side of the room, Rick and Nick, two of the extra nurses brought in from Fort, were making their rounds: checking vitals and changing the wet cloths placed at each patient's ankles and wrists. Nice men, both of them, even if they had tried to bundle her off to bed earlier. "Aren't you supposed to be with Derren?" she asked.

Her son cracked a weary smile. "Yeah, I am. Until about three hours back, and not again before dawn."

"It's that late?"

"Hour or so past midnight. So yeah, that late." Liam yawned. "Or that early. Couldn't sleep, thought I'd make myself useful. Always need more needlethorn prepping. How are you? How are the dragons bearing up?"

"Tired, but the stims are helping. And the dragons are much better than-" Torene stopped, suddenly doubting her own mind._ Were_ they doing better, really? The dragons might_ seem_ to be less distressed than they had been, but Torene didn't think she was imagining that their need for reassurance – particularly from her – was growing.

Torene sensed Alaranth turning the thought over in her own mind, and coming to the same conclusion. _Yes. The longer this goes on, the more the danger grows._

Liam was waiting patiently for her to finish. She gave him a wry smile before revising her previous statement. "Right now, the dragons are doing okay. They don't like it, and Brianth's been making a pest of himself as usual, but...they're okay. What I don't know is if the same will be true tomorrow, especially while the rest of the Weyr is off fighting Thread. Having their riders sedated like this is very hard on them."

"Is there anything I can do to help?"

Torene looked back down at M'hall, half-hoping that he might open his eyes and acknowledge her. "You could find someone to give your father a shave, later," she said without thinking, before realising how ridiculously trivial it sounded. "No, that's a silly thing to ask. You've got far more-"

"Ma. I understand. And I'll do it."

She met her son's eyes, wondering how it could be possible that a dragon had never yet chosen him. "Thank you, Liam. Has there been any more word from Fort yet?"

Liam shook his head. "No, they're still chasing down leads. Derren had a message through from Doc Force earlier confirming that it's not contagious, but we'd guessed that anyway." He leaned forward, elbows on knees, and glumly cradled his chin in his hands. "All we can do is watch and wait, I guess, and hope for improvement in the morning."

It was almost word for word what Derren had told Torene earlier that day. "Wait, eh? Ah well, I'm getting good at-"

"Liam?" It was Rick, the shorter of the two nurses, who'd spoken. He was stooped over Lucy Vickery's bed, intent on his patient, but the tone of his voice and the little Torene could see of his features was more than enough to worry her.

"Problem?" Liam asked, springing to his feet.

"Fetch Derren for me, quick as you can," the nurse said without looking up, his hands busily engaged with wrapping a cuff around the young rider's arm. "Amillia too, if she's around!" he added as Liam dashed towards the door.

"What's happening?" Torene pushed herself up from her chair and started towards Lucy's bed, feeling for Brendath's mind as she walked. _Where is she, Allie? _

_There, Rene, _the queen supplied, nudging Torene's awareness towards a group of dragons sleeping on the floor of the weyrbowl. _Shall I wake her? _

Torene touched the green's mind as lightly as she could. Brendath's mind was calm and quiet, but she'd always been a particularly steady green. _No, don't wake her yet. I don't want her worried needlessly. _Which was exactly what she herself might be doing, seeing as Rick still hadn't answered her question! "Good news or bad, Rick?" she pushed.

"She's deteriorating," the nurse muttered. "I think we may be losing-ah, shit! Shit!"

And that was all the warning Torene had.

One second she was standing beside Lucy's bed. The next, she was with Brendath, she _was_ Brendath, and the most precious part of her soul was gone beyond any ability of her own to rediscover. The pain of it, the sheer _need_ that now devoured her...it was indescribable. Unsurvivable. Torene collapsed to the ground, howling with loss, as Brendath slipped instinctively into oblivion. Never, never before had she been in such close rapport with a dragon at the moment of their rider's death. It was too much, too terrible to bear!

_Rene! _Alaranth cried out to her, keening her own grief.

Flailing for something for her consciousness to hold onto, Torene desperately sought out the security and succour offered by her queen's mind. Alaranth was with her, sharing her heart-felt grief – holding her strong, loving her, sustaining her. Torene swallowed it all in, drawing as deeply as she could on the strength of Alaranth's will, because Alaranth was no longer the only dragon in her mind. They were all there: Narranath, Morlaith, Brianth, Tegwenth, Riath-Dannikath-Jormath-Harooth-Dinth... and with their riders in such precarious health, Torene didn't dare close her mind to any one of them. The sheer force of the dragons' grief for Brendath was bad enough, but the panic and despair that followed was almost more than she could bear. Torene clung to Alaranth's strength, opening her mind as wide as she could to the flood of the dragons' anguish.

_Your riders live, Jormath, Dinth, _ Alaranth was insisting with all the conviction she could muster, bespeaking as many dragons as she could in quick-fire succession. _See, Tegwenth, there are healers tending Lia now. G'iam sleeps, Dannikath, and so do Grace and B'kar and L'win. A deep sleep, so they can be well for you sooner! _

The other queens were doing much the same, and for some of the dragons the reassurance seemed to be working...but the minds of the rest were a roiling chaos. Brianth was there, so strong and steady even while he was breaking up inside. It made her want to weep. Torene threw her mind into the maelstrom, soothing and calming as well as she could. It was like being swept away by raging flood water, or being dragged behind a runaway horse. She had no control beyond being open to them or not, and if there was only so much of herself that could be spared, they were taking it from her anyway. But it was helping, wasn't it? Wasn't it? Or was she draining herself to no avail, fighting fire with a fishing net?

Using Brianth as her guide, Torene pulled her consciousness back into proper focus. Brown Dinth was the worst_ -he's not there I can't feel him where are you WHERE ARE YOU?- _but green Narranath -_L'win? L'win? L'win? L'win?-_ wasn't far behind. She had to choose, had to prioritise, or she'd risk losing all of them. Torene concentrated hard on both dragons, subduing Dinth with sheer force of will while she simultaneously soothed Narranath's overwhelming fear. _Br'dan lives, Dinth. You will trust me now! He lives._ _I hear you, Narranath, and L'win will hear you soon. He needs your love to grow well. Be calm, be strong. I am with you both, I am with you, with all of you..._

She struggled to hold to the truth of that last thought. Already, she could feel dragons slipping away from her touch, and if some were managing well enough on their own, others...

_Greteth! Rementh! Help me help my Rene!_

Torene could sense Alaranth gathering as many wayward minds to her as she could, pulling strength from the other queens and using it to bolster her own. Torene reached out for the dragons she'd lost contact with. Harooth, Morlaith, Oshalth, Brith... but Riath was a knot of silent pain. She threw all of her strength at Riath's mind, breaking through the blue's fearful, icy-cold determination. He needed N'thiel, had to find him, had to be with him. But N'thiel wouldn't wake, couldn't be found. N'thiel wasn't _asleep_, Riath _knew_ what sleep was. He was going to find him. What else could he do? He was going to find N'thiel, he _was_. There was air beneath his wings, and he was going, going, going, going to find his rider, no matter where he was.

_NO! _ Torene sent the thought with all the force she had left to her, stalling Riath's flight before he could leap _between. NO, _ she insisted again, pushing the blue to return to his ledge. _N'thiel is here, Riath, he _ is _ still here. Listen to me, pleasepleaseplease. Oh please. Don't go. Please don't go._

Angered and upset, blue Riath reluctantly submitted to Torene's pleading and Alaranth's will.

_That's it Riath, that's good, _ Torene sent weakly. _You're being very brave._

"Ma?"

Torene groaned, and rolled onto her side. Had she fallen? Blinking, she let Liam and Rick help her back to her feet. Her head was pounding, and she couldn't stop her limbs from trembling. "What the... what...?"

"I'm sorry, Weyrwoman, but we lost her," Rick said, oblivious to the redundancy of telling Torene that to her face. "Do you need to lie down?"

"Chair," she gasped. "Can't rest. Dragons need me. What happened to Lucy?"

"Complications from the edema, I think," Derren said, bent over the still form on the bed, "but we'll need an autopsy to be sure. I'd hoped it wouldn't come to this, but..." He made a resigned sound and straightened up from his inspection of Lucy's body. "Do I have your permission, Weyrwoman?"

"Of course you do," she said. Then, the clues within the rest of what he'd said slipped chillingly into place. "Come to _what_, Derren?"

The doctor grimaced. "We're doing everything we can for them, Weyrwoman – and I _know_ that you are, too, you and Alaranth and the other queens...but there's only so much punishment that the human body can take. If we can't find some way to treat this..."

"You're saying it'll kill them?"

"Not all of them," Derren said hastily. "But...yes. I don't think Lucy's the last person we'll lose from this."

"M'hall," Torene breathed.

"He'll be alright, Ma," Liam said, pulling her into his arms. "He's a fighter, and so's Brianth! We'll figure something out. We'll figure it out, we will!"

"Oh, Liam!" she whispered, hoping with all her heart that her son's faith wasn't misplaced.

* * *

><p>The rest of the night dragged on abominably. Torene spent most of it on her feet, pacing the infirmary floor, alternating between mugs of klah and iced water. Rick and Nick's duties soon took them back to one of the overflow wards, but Rick slipped her a stronger decongestant and a couple of stims before he disappeared. Staying awake for so long was already taking a heavy toll, but what choice did she have? The dragons <em>needed <em>her, needed her to be there for as long as it took for their riders to recover.

Recover, not wake: there was an important distinction there. Sleep was natural, and a sleeping rider was no cause for their dragon's concern. Even after a severe threadscore, when a rider might be sedated or even intubated for a couple of days or more, so long as the dragon was properly supported by a queen, their rider's unconsciousness didn't usually distress them overmuch. No, it was the delirium and the confusion that was the problem. For all of their great-heartedness, most dragons were straightforward, literal thinkers, and they simply lacked the context to process their riders' distress. She could do that for them, she could anchor them, could make the distinctions between what was real and what was not.

But she couldn't do a thing for their riders. H'ri and Thyrenth died shortly before dawn, followed minutes later by Netta and Pranparalth.

Torene was still recovering from the aftermath of Pranparalth's suicide when Persephone Force appeared at the infirmary door. She wiped away her tears with the heel of her hand, then quickly blew her nose. "Please tell me you've got some good news for us, Seph?"

The doctor wordlessly gestured towards the door that led into Derren's office. "We know much more than we did this time yesterday," she said softly as Torene joined her. "Not the whole of it, but certainly more than we did."

As soon as they were both inside Derren's office, Torene found herself the object of the doctor's scrutiny. "You're looking suspiciously perky for someone who hasn't slept in three days," Persephone said wryly. "Sit down, Weyrwoman. Doctor's orders."

"Glad to," Torene said, taking one of the two chairs set in front of Derren's desk. Persephone took the other and started talking, her voice as clear and precise as every other aspect of her being, in spite of the low volume and speed of her words.

"We've got a fairly good idea of where your people caught it," Persephone began, "and we've ruled out a number of things that it _isn't_. We've confirmed that there's no connection at all to the virus that _you_ have right now, Weyrwoman. It's not contagious, it's not airborne, and it's not from anything your people have eaten or drunk. The water samples all came back clean, and you could eat Longwood Bacon day-in, day-out for a year and die of nothing worse than a heart attack...so long as you cook it properly. The bitemes were another possibility, and we can't yet rule them out completely, but we're pretty sure they're irrelevant as a vector – the Weyr and Bitra both had a handful of people who spent the whole day foraging in the marshes, and not one of them has sickened."

Torene frowned. "Soon's ill. She was in one of the marsh groups."

"The _whole_ time?"

"I'm not sure."

"Well I am," the doctor insisted. "Your people caught it on the beaches, Torene. It's a widespread, localised contagion...and yes, I know that sounds contradictory, but it's quite possible for something to be both. You catch it from direct exposure, and right now we're guessing that fifty to eighty percent of those exposed fall sick."

"But exposure to _what_?" Torene demanded. "You still haven't told me what it is!"

Persephone leaned back in her chair and gave a slight shake of her head. "Sorry Torene, but this is where I run out of concrete answers for you. We're still investigating. Laura Radamanth has some crazy ideas...hell, they sound crazy, but no-one else has done any better yet, and who's to say that she isn't right?" She sighed, and shrugged. "The important thing is, I have some new drugs to try today, and I'm pretty hopeful that we can alleviate enough of the symptoms to stop anyone else from dying.

* * *

><p>Persephone was briefly proved right, but the respite afforded by her new treatments didn't last much beyond the following dawn. After that, the hours started to blur for Torene, and the days. She lived off stims and klah and painkillers, stale bread choked down in haste and cold bowls of chicken soup, the voices of her son and daughters, and the sight of M'hall's steadily hollowing face. Her sinuses cleared, which was good, because by then she'd run out of hankies and could no longer remember what they were called to ask for more. When Z'bar and Fergoth died, and later, M'tin and Jormath, she dried her eyes on her sleeve instead. She gritted her teeth through M'hall's first seizure. Wept again, when she could finally believe that it had passed.<p>

In her darker moments, she worried that she'd completely misjudged the battle being waged. Was it truly a question of when – or if – the stricken weyrfolk would win their fight against the sickness? Or, was the real issue whether it would be a rider's body or their dragon's mind that broke down first? The mentasynth-enhanced connection of Impression had a _physical_ basis in the brain's neural architecture...and even with Torene and the queens to support and steady them, and the sedation of their riders shielding them from the chaos of fever-driven delirium, the connections between dragon and rider were pushed ever closer towards their breaking point with every additional hour that passed. Torene found herself wondering if the dragons of younger, more malleable riders like Grace or L'win would find the insidious erosion of that bond easier to bear? Or, would the sheer length of the partnership prove to be the more crucial factor, leaving dragons like Tegwenth and Noldrith, hatched from Pern's first natural clutches, the best placed to cope?

She didn't sleep, but somehow she still managed to dream. She dreamed of Ierne, of the years when Benden Weyr had been new, of people she loved and people she scarcely knew. She dreamed dreams that she wasn't even sure were her own. She _might_ have dreamed Laura Radamanth, Josh Tillek, Wind Blossom Ping and young Emorra Ping, all four of them babbling enthusiastically and incomprehensibly about Thread and phage-vectors, ocean currents and fishing waters, and forbidden techniques that even the Eridani had shied away from applying...but her memory of that one was almost too surreal to blame on her own subconscious.

She slept: a short-lived, ill-advised catnap, and a nightmare that only worsened on waking. The stress had finally become too much for Narranath, and the green had suicided_._ Minutes later, L'win arrested: Torene had woken just in time to watch him die.

Hours passed. Another night, another day. Persephone came back again, with some different drugs to try, and some more effective stims for Torene. M'hall and half a dozen others reacted badly. Torene endured three long minutes of pure agony: holding Brianth together through the course of M'hall's second seizure and screaming curses to the heavens as Gindrith slipped away. She wept under the icy blast of a cold shower, crushed by the weight of dread and fear that was almost all that the dragons under her care could think about, and by her own self-hate for being forced to choose the life of one dragon over another.

Hours passed. Another night, another death.

And then Lia's fever broke.

The sedation took a while to wear off, but Torene was with Tegwenth when the green realised that she could clearly sense her rider's thoughts again. She shared the dragon's joy with every mind she could reach, and it soon seemed to Torene that the whole Weyr was drunk on elation and hope. Lia had some pain, still, and was troubled even by the infirmary's dim light, but Seph Force was certain that it was simply some lingering neural misfires that would pass soon enough.

Lia, N'klas and five other riders were moved out of the infirmary later that day. M'hall hadn't yet shown any improvement, but Brianth was bearing up as well as he could, as well as any of them could. It was getting harder and harder for the dragons to bear it, and Torene knew that she was running out of strength. Hope was a bitter thing indeed when it was still too far out of reach. She was with the dragons all the time now: not just the ones who needed her, but all of the dragons of the Weyr, and many of those from elsewhere on Pern. They'd stopped talking now – or at least they'd stopped talking in any manner that made sense to her exhausted mind – but she knew they were there all the same. With her, for her, and for the pitiful dragons still adrift, waiting for their lifemates to recover.

It was noon. She was outside, staring at the sky, blue and cold. She was Alaranth and Enniolth and Brianth, wheeling and turning in the burning bright air. She was Petrath again, fighting back pain and darkness, clinging to N'klas' hand and mind as they bore him back into the infirmary again, his eyes heavily swathed in bandages.

She was there, in the darkness, holding M'hall's hand, holding Brianth's mind, and Dannikath, Enniolth, Riath, Oshalth, Brith. She held them, nothing more than that, her mind as dark as she could make it, an empty expanse lit by the stars of countless dragon minds._ I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry,_ she thought, weeping with her beloved, flickering stars, as the horizon grew grey and pale and one by one they all slipped away.

Morning again. Mourning again. Holding M'hall's hand. Reaching for Brianth, for Riath, for Enniolth. Fighting to find them, failing to make any contact at all. Liam and Derren insisting that she slept, that she'd already done more than anyone humanly could. Kissing M'hall's forehead, the coolness of his flesh against her lips. Weeping, emptying the shell that was all that was left of herself out, until only Alaranth remained.

_Let go, Rene,_ Alaranth said. _I need you to let go now._

* * *

><p><em>AN: What IS Impression, really? One might just as well ask what consciousness is, or the human soul. But, at the end of the day, you still need functional grey matter to host it...<em>

_The exact nature of the illness should be relatively obvious by now. I've tried to match the symptoms as well as I can to those displayed in the 9th Pass books, and hand-waved through the gaps. I'm also working on the basis that Jaxom's Ruth was indeed an above-average dragon in many respects, who was demonstrably able to function with much greater independence of body and thought than the typical dragon._

_As always, thanks to all my readers and reviewers - and I'd love to know what you think about this story._


	5. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world

_Present Pass, 25.10.41_  
><em>Benden Weyr and Bitra Hold<em>

Torene woke to an empty Weyr.

She was inside her own quarters, lying on her own bed. The room was dark and the glowbaskets were all shuttered, but there was just enough light escaping through the chinks between the woven reeds that she could tell where she was. More filtered through from outside: pale and weak, but warm, too, she realised. It was some time before noon and Alaranth was out on her ledge, fast asleep, making the best of the direct sunlight while she could.

Why had M'hall let her oversleep? Torene wondered. And why was the Weyr so quiet? She was accustomed to waking up to a chorus of dragon chatter regardless of the exact hour, but right at that moment she could barely hear a thing, not even from the weyrlings...and they could _always _be relied upon to disturb her, unless she specifically screened them from her thoughts. It was too late in the year for Gathers, and she was quite sure that there was no thread falling over Benden's territory, even if she couldn't quite place the exact date for some reason. Had M'hall arranged another...?

And then she remembered.

Gasping, Torene tore away her bedding and scrambled to her feet. She shouldn't have slept, _couldn't_ have slept! "Allie?" she called out weakly, echoing her queen's name in her thoughts. She felt Alaranth start to stir from her slumber, but the other dragons that should have been there – the dragons she'd spent herself dry looking after – oh, fates have mercy, _where were they? _Where was Enniolth? Brith? And where was _Brianth? _"Brianth?"

"He's on the ledge, Rene, curled up next to Allie."

Halfway to the door, Torene whirled to a stop. "M'hall?" She squinted into the darkness at the back of the room, and saw a figure rising stiffly up from the easy-chair. It was the right _shape_ to be M'hall, even if the voice was hoarse and weak. But... "I can't hear him, M'hall!"

"I wouldn't worry," the man said, moving slowly towards her. "He's never been one for talking in his sleep...not like you, love."

Unconvinced, she took a step backwards, shaking her head. "I can't hear any of them!" she whispered, more to herself than to him. Her mouth was dry and her head was aching, but she pushed through the pain regardless, reaching out for the dragons of her Weyr. She could feel them – some of them – but their thoughts were muted and slow, and deeply tinged with grief. Fearful, she pushed herself harder still, trying to isolate the dragons whose lives had been in her hands...until she'd abandoned them to their fates. Where were Tegwenth and Dannikath and Petrath? Oshalth? Riath?

_Brianth? _she sent, desperate to make sense of the silence. Which_ was_ a silence and _not_ an absence, she realised with a sudden burst of relief. _Brianth! _she tried again, finding strength and focus in her certainty.

_...Rene? _came a very sleepy reply a few seconds later. The shape of the bronze's mind slowly resolved, spilling out into her own in a heavy, dreamlike flood of misplaced sensation.

"Rene?" M'hall echoed, pulling her into his arms.

"He's there," Torene gasped, slumping against him. "Oh, M'hall, I thought I'd lost you both, lost all of you! I couldn't find him, couldn't find any of them. You've no_ idea_ how afraid I was just then."

He tightened his grip and planted a kiss on her cheek. "Shh... I'm back with you now, and you with me, and you know we'll never leave your side."

"I also know you don't_ always_ get things your own way," she muttered as she brought up her hands to take hold of his face. She'd meant to look him sternly in the eyes, but... "M'hall? _Why_ are you wearing sunglasses?"

His lips twisting into a wry grimace, he brushed her fingers aside before she could pull the glasses away from his face. "Same reason the room's so dark. Seph reckons the light sensitivity will clear up eventually, but until it does it's not to be treated lightly. And I'm one of the lucky ones. Seph's hopeful that Lia and G'iam might recover some of their vision, but N'klas and half a dozen others have lost their sight completely."

"This horrible, hideous sickness..." To have stolen so much from her Weyr! It had almost taken M'hall from her, too, and the fact that it hadn't surely had as much to do with his sheer obstinacy as anything else. But what of the other stricken riders and their dragons? She squeezed her eyes closed and concentrated hard, battling to find another dragon...but they slipped away from her touch like smoke. She tried again, but before she could make contact M'hall spoke her name and her focus shattered.

"Don't push yourself, Rene, not yet," he said. "Alaranth warned us that you'd overdone it – shaffit, she could barely sense you at all by the end! – and she and Derren _both_ say you need to take things easy today."

"But I have to know they're okay!"

"Then slow down and_ ask_, damn it! The whole Weyr owes you more than we can ever repay, but you damn near killed yourself doing it! Just stick to talking to Alaranth for a while. Here, Brianth says she's waking up now."

Torene lifted her chin away from M'hall's shoulder and turned towards the door and the ledge beyond. "Allie?"

_It's so good to hear you again, my wonderful Rene. Everything will be alright now. The sickness is gone._

_And the dragons? I can't hear them, Allie! Not like I could!_

_They sleep now, most of them. _

_Most? _

_A few are wakeful. Enniolth is on the rim, and Fianth shares Rementh's ledge. _ Alaranth paused, mentally bracing Torene for the bad news to come. _Harooth followed M'med _between.

_Oh, no. And the others?_

_They live, and you _ will _hear them again soon. Your strength will return, and so will theirs._

Torene could sense that there was more that her queen wasn't saying, but Alaranth adroitly turned her thoughts away from the details.

_It has been a very sorrowful time for our Weyr, _ Alaranth said _. I do not think I can forget it, but I must concentrate on the living for now, and so must you. _ The queen yawned and stretched as she woke more fully, the intensity of her thoughts deepening. She was clear and warm and bright, and she held Torene close, comforting her as she soothed away the last remnants of her rider's fears. _Now it is time to look after yourself. Ask M'hall what you must know, eat some food, and wait for the doctor to see that you are well. After that, M'hall must stay inside, but I would like it very much if you came and sat with me for a time._

_I will,_ Torene agreed. _I would like that very much as well. _Sighing, she turned back to her weyrmate. "I don't know what I'd do without her, really I don't."

"Brianth says she's mothering you."

Torene wasn't about to deny that she was feeling in sore need of it. "Yes, she is. She says we lost M'med and Harooth as well? When? How?"

"Organ failure, Derren said. Several hours after you'd passed out, and there wouldn't have been anything you could have done in any case. Harooth stayed strong, Rene, right until the end. And they were the last."

Last, perhaps, but by no means the first. The memory was painfully hard, and she felt tears pricking at the corner of her eyes. "Scorch it," she said, swallowing back a sob, "I don't even know how many we lost!"

M'hall drew in a long, deep breath. "Twenty-nine dragons, twenty-three riders, and six of the weyrfolk. Seph says that Bitra's losses were similar, proportionally."

"So many!" she breathed. She'd lived their deaths, but she hadn't until now realised how _many_ of them there'd been. "Oh, love...I'm so _sorry_ that I couldn't do more!"

"Sorry? Sorry, Rene? When it could have been _so_ much worse?" Swaying on his feet a little, he pulled her back into his embrace, then raised a hand to tenderly weave his fingers into her curls. "We'd have lost two or three times that number if you'd sickened as well, if you hadn't _been_ there, holding us all together. _Brianth, _Rene," M'hall added, his voice breaking with heartfelt emotion. "I'd have lost _him_, if not for you. So don't you dare apologise, don't you ever do that, not after everything you've done for us all."

Tears in her eyes, Torene leaned forwards to kiss her weyrmate lightly on the lips.

"I'd have lost _you_, Rene," M'hall whispered.

"Never," she answered.

* * *

><p>It was strange, Torene decided an hour or so later, to see an unfamiliar dragon appearing in the sky above the Weyr and to <em>not <em>already know who they were from the watchdragon's mind.

_Who's the blue?_ she asked her queen.

_Rhureeth of Fort, _ Alaranth said. _He asks if you are well, and says that he and P'ree have brought someone to speak to you. A woman from the College._

_Seph Force? _

_Not the doctor. It's one of the scientists who visited during the sickness. Wind Blossom,_ Alaranth said, matching Rhureeth's image of the old woman's face with the name from Torene's memory.

_Then tell Rhureth that we're all doing much better, and that I'll be very happy to speak to her. _Torene wondered what sort of answers Blossom had brought with her, and if they'd make any more sense now than the confusing fragments that were all she remembered from the scientists' visit during the previous week.

_Rhureeth says P'ree says she wants to go somewhere private, _ Alaranth added as the blue landed lightly on the ground close to the queen's weyr _. _

_That doesn't sound like she's bringing good news, does it? _ Sighing, Torene got to her feet and started down the steps. _ Thank Rhureeth for me please, Alaranth, and tell him we'll see to Blossom's conveyance home. _

D'vid and the other healthy Wingleaders were still occupying the council room, discussing their plans for Benden's next threadfall along with A'stin of Telgar and L'see of Ista, whose Wings would be assisting Benden on the day. So, after greeting Blossom and thanking P'ree for herself, Torene led the scientist through the Lower Caverns and into the headwoman's office, knowing that Marai would be busy in the kitchens at that hour. The room was cluttered with various un-filed documents on hide, paper and slate, an overflowing sack of unfinished handicrafts and a whole shelf of homely knick-knacks, but at least her chairs were comfortable. Torene placed a hand on the back of the one she usually favoured, and gestured for Blossom to take her pick from one of the others.

"Shall I send for some klah?" she asked.

Blossom widened her dark eyes like a startled wherry. "Oh no! Thank you, but no!" She folded her fine-boned hands delicately in her lap. "There's only so much klah one can stomach at my age."

"Water, then?" Without waiting for an answer, Torene went to Marai's dresser and poured two cups from the jug that was brought in fresh every morning. She handed one to Blossom, then went to sit down. The cushions were even more comfortable than she remembered, and it occurred to her then that she might have better luck concentrating if she'd chosen a different one. She took a swallow from her cup, and shifted her posture forwards. "So. I take it you've learned something we should know about?"

The scientist's face was grave. "Many things. We think we understand the full course of the disease now. Laura Radamanth made the key breakthrough, isolating the vector – mychorrizoid cilia embedded in the algal residue – but it does some very strange and unique things before as well as after infection."

"Well, I won't pretend that I understand much of that," Torene said, "but if you and your colleagues do, then that's good enough for me. But do you know _enough_ to treat it? Or to stop anyone else contracting it?"

Blossom gave her a kindly smile. "I think you'd grasp the nuances better than you think, Torene, if we took you through them slowly enough. I'll send Laura to visit once she's finished documenting her results. Put simply, the infective agent itself does remarkably little _in vivo, _and it dies off remarkably fast_._ But the initial exposure triggers a massive response from the patient's immune system, which perceives their own neurological tissue as being at fault. By the time the first symptoms appear, the infective agent has already receded to an almost undetectable level...but unfortunately, enough of it remains to sustain the immunological assault for an entire week or more. That's what made it so difficult to pin down. But to answer your question: yes _and_ no. We've picked out enough of the key MNA-PNA sequences to make it theoretically _possible_ to develop a targeted block for the prion-insertions on the cellular level and break the immune-cascade before it starts...but I'm afraid it's a slow and resource-expensive process, and can't help more than one person at a time."

Torene mentally filed the information away as _possible but impractical. _"Can we prevent the infections in the first place?"

"By suppressing the immune system prior to exposure, yes."

"Oh." Torene winced, and was rewarded by another approving smile from the elderly scientist. "What about...if we know what's carrying it, can we come up with some way of destroying it?"

Tilting her head, Blossom regarded her thoughtfully. "Quite likely. The best – and simplest – answer is to simply avoid the algal stains. They're easy enough to identify if you know to watch out for them."

It might not be a cure, but it certainly sounded like a workable solution. But for some reason, Blossom's words left Torene feeling troubled. She could sense no relief in the scientist's certainty, only a deep and lingering sense of dread. "But it's more serious than that. Something about this worries you, doesn't it?"

"You are a uniquely insightful woman, Torene of Benden," Blossom said – but this time, there was no smile to accompany her praise. "Yes. There _is_ much that worries me. And I very much hope that it will worry you, too." Closing her eyes, she leaned back in her chair. "Tell me, Weyrwoman. What does Thread _do_?"

"It falls from the sky and devours any organic matter that it touches," Torene said, fully aware that she wasn't giving Wind Blossom the answer that she sought. "It burrows, if we let it, and then it starves and dies."

"Let me rephrase," Blossom said softly. "There's a question I've been asking myself again and again over the years. What is thread's _purpose_?"

"Purpose? Thread _has_ no purpose. It's mindless."

"Not of its own, perhaps." Blossom opened her eyes, and glanced around the room. "But then... nor does a chair, or a basket full of glows, or a half-knitted sweater, or a pretty piece of stone."

The scientist's words send a shiver down Torene's spine, even if she couldn't yet see any connection between Thread and the contagion. "You're implying it was engineered, aren't you?" she whispered.

"Now that I don't know. We didn't engineer the glows now, did we? But we've made _use_ of them all the same. And I'm sure they've been lighting Pern's caverns perfectly well for no-one at all, for centuries and centuries before us humans arrived. If Thread _did _have a creator, I hope I never get to meet her...but regardless of whether its innate purpose is engineered or not, it still fulfils it all the same."

"Tell me then," Torene insisted. "What _is_ it that you've deduced? What _is _Thread's purpose?"

"To kill," Blossom answered, just as simply as Torene herself had done. "To cleanse a planet of polluting biological life; to fall from the sky and devour anything organic, just as you said. To gorge itself and grow until it starves, and then to mar the landscape as countless tarry husks, until the rain and the wind disperse the last microscopic remnants back into the rivers and the ground. And then..."

"And then?"

Blossom rose from her chair and plucked a long-stemmed ornamental seed-head from the vase on Marai's desk. "Laura believes – and I'm slowly coming around to the idea – that there's more to the Thread husks than we thought. That although they're dead, and no immediate risk to the living, they're not completely devoid of substance. She thinks that there's information encoded inside them on the molecular level, some knowledge of the sort of matter it consumed. Nothing very much, and certainly nothing sentient...just a seed. A seed that might _become_ something new. And it rots, it fragments, and eventually it breaks down enough to fertilise the soil and wash into the sea, where it mixes with effluent and algae, and the algae _blooms_ and dies in its turn, and washes onto the shore..."

"We were infected by _Thread_?" Horrified, Torene pressed herself backwards into her chair, as if she might escape the thought that way.

"Nothing so dramatic!" Blossom said, rolling the seed-head between her fingers until it crumbled into tiny flakes. "I'll admit, much of this is speculation. But the ecosystem we depend on, it doesn't exist in isolation: not from us, and not from Thread, either. The genetics of the algae we studied was riddled with mychorrizoid interlopers. Fragments, only, but enough to spawn a lethal toxin that might have been _designed_ with us in mind. We've left our mark on this world, Torene, writ large enough that we might not be the only lifeforms capable of reading it. This infection was a first...a _first, _Weyrwoman, and while we'll almost certainly suffer the occasional outbreak in the years and centuries ahead, we can only pray that the illness itself is unique."

Torene let out her breath in a long, heavy sigh. "Shit. So what you're saying..."

"Is that while this incident, as costly as it was, proved to be manageable, we might not be so lucky the next time round. We need to take action, Weyrwoman."

"How?"

"A fire requires heat, fuel, oxygen. Remove any one of those and it fails. We can do little to alter Pern itself, and it would be counter-productive to remove _ourselves..._but the Thread husks are a different matter. _Burn_ them, Weyrwoman, sear the Threads before they can burrow, and burn them out from the ground, no matter where on this continent they fall. The Weyrs have the numbers now: you can protect far more than just the inhabited holds. You _need _to. Otherwise, when the Pass ends, when the Holds look to expand into lands previously blighted by Thread..."

"Something like this could happen again?"

"You_ can_ defend this continent."

"And the South?" Torene probed.

Blossom sombrely shook her head. "Eventually, Tubberman's grubs should be widespread enough to afford it sufficient protection, but I doubt that that will come to pass even within my daughter's lifetime. Until then, I advise that travel to the South should be severely limited, or ideally banned outright."

"I understand," Torene said, pushing herself slowly up from her chair. "Thank you for bringing this to me, Blossom. I'll speak to M'hall, and then I'd like to arrange for the other Weyrleaders to meet with all three of us. If you're certain of the course we need to take, then it would be foolhardy indeed not to follow it."

"Then I will happily leave the matter in your capable hands," Wind Blossom said. "The Weyrs are the true protectors of Pern, and these decisions are rightfully yours and your fellow Weyrleaders' to make."

Wind Blossom didn't linger long after that. Torene watched her depart from the Weyrbowl, then climbed slowly back up the steps to Alaranth's ledge. The queen was still enjoying the daylight, but Brianth had followed M'hall's example and gone inside to sleep. Torene settled herself back against the crook of Alaranth's leg. She'd hoped that Blossom's answers would lighten her load, but in truth she now felt more heavily burdened than ever.

_Do not despair, _the queen said, her eyes whirling a lambent golden-green. _This is a good land, and it would be a good thing if we protected more of it. _

_I know,_ Torene said. _But it's one thing to choose to protect the bits of the North we don't need because it's a worthy thing to do, and quite another if it's all that stands between us and an ugly death. And the South is good land, too. _

_Is the difference so great? _Alaranth asked.

Torene was still pondering her answer when the first of the Wingleaders made their way out from the corridor that led down to the council room. _I don't think many people will be happy about it, Allie. I don't even know if the truth would make things better or worse!_

_Then we should do something we _ know _ will help, _ Alaranth said. _You were sad about the loss of life at your friend's Hold earlier, and you know she will not like this news at all. So why not send a Wing of dragons and riders to ask if there is any assistance we can offer while they wait for their sick to recover?_

The queen raised her head from the ground and stared intently at the departing Wingleaders. D'vid immediately slowed to a halt, then turned promptly towards them.

"Rene? Polenth says you've an errand for our Wing?"

Efficient as always, D'vid had his Wing airborne and _between_ before another half hour had passed. By then, although Torene was still finding it difficult to hear the dragons' casual conversations amongst themselves, she was rediscovering her knack of bespeaking a single dragon of her choosing. She spoke to Enniolth first, and then to Dannikath, and was truly delighted by how well they were recovering from their ordeal.

And then she sensed Polenth questing for Alaranth's mind, from many miles far to the west.

_Polenth? Do you_ _ hear me, Polenth?_ she sent.

_Rene! Yes, I hear you. _

Polenth's thoughts were hard to grasp, but something seemed strange about the bronze dragon's mind. Torene put it down to her lingering mental fatigue...until Alaranth shared the details of what Polenth and the other dragons of his Wing were seeing.

Bitra Hold was burning.

* * *

><p>Furious beyond words, Torene paced slowly across the courtyard of Bitra Hold, keeping her eyes firmly on the ground. It was raining lightly and the paving was wet, and although the tread of her boots was good enough to keep her from slipping, she still took care over where she placed her feet. The ground was streaked with ash-grey run-off from the burned and smoke-blackened Hold...and, here and there, runnels and standing pools where violence had stained the water an even less welcome shade.<p>

It was a far cry from how the place had looked during Bitra's Gather, barely three weeks ago. Then, there'd been stalls decked out in rust-red cloth and plaited corn-dollies, piled high with everything from unwanted cast-offs to newly hand-crafted items for barter or sale. The place had been colourfully crowded with people wearing their Gather-day best: swarming around the gaming tables, cheering on the runners, or simply eating and drinking their fill of bean chilli and local ale. More colour overhead – a dozen or so firelizards that looked to Bitra Hold, darting through the air and sporting playfully with the fluttering bunting that was strung from the courtyard's corners – and children everywhere, laughing and shrieking.

She was trying very hard not to think about the children. Almost all of them had survived the fire, but far too many had lost one or more of their parents. The grieving families, impoverished in every sense, now faced the prospect of being forced to start afresh for the second time in less than three years.

_They cannot stay here, _Alaranth reminded her.

_No, _ Torene replied _. No they can't! Not any more._

She sidestepped another discoloured puddle, still trying to make sense of the circumstances that had led to Bitra's ruination. Getting consistent, honest answers out of anyone hadn't been easy, but as near as Torene could figure out, the tipping point had been when Len Vickery died. Up until then, Marta had done everything right – she'd placed herself and the others who'd travelled south to Ierne under strict quarantine within minutes of the first person falling ill, along with all of the goods they'd brought back with them. Marta herself had rapidly become too sick to communicate, but her deputies Euan Evans and Amy Mayhew-Clissmann had kept the Hold running in her absence, and done their best to assuage the fears of the healthy populace.

Unfortunately, the best efforts of Marta's deputies hadn't been quite good enough. In the aftermath of Len Vickery's death, a small, panicked group had gathered up as much as they could carry of the Ierne produce and burned it to cinders in one of the Hold's brick kilns. That action had prompted one of the less salubrious factions of the Hold to realise exactly how poorly protected the Hold's stores actually were. Before the day was out, Johnny and Agatha Greene had instigated what they insisted was only a precautionary guard roster, supposedly to help Marta's deputies oversee the fair and secure distribution of essentials. It had worked well enough at first, but the ease with which the Greene Gang had finagled control over the Hold's food supply left a lot of people discomfited, and set a similar number speculating over what might happen if Marta failed to recover. But, eventually, the fevers broke, just as they had done in the Weyr. The dead were interred and the expert medics who'd been flown in from Fort returned to the College, leaving the recovering Bitrans in the care of the resident doctor and nurses. A day later, in the middle of the memorial service, Bill Vickery had made the crucial mistake of taking offence at the 'redistribution' of some of his brother's belongings. Aggy Greene had promptly decided that possession was a far more profitable course than mere oversight, and later that day, backed up by the fists of the worse half of the Sampson clan, she'd declared herself and her brother jointly in command of Bitra Hold.

Marta, at that point, had been little better off than M'hall, but she hadn't been about to take an attempted coup lying down. Eyes heavily bandaged to protect the little that was left of her sight, she and Euan had talked their way past the Greene Gang's barricades with the intent of persuading Aggy and Johnny to stand down. Whether they'd have succeeded in that or not was something that no-one would ever know: they hadn't been inside more than an hour when some idiot had come up with the monumentally stupid idea of trying to_ smoke_ the Greene Gang out of the storage caverns where they'd holed themselves up.

By all accounts, the fire the unidentified idiot had set hadn't been particularly large, but it _had_ been right next to the only feed-store that wasn't under Aggy Greene's direct control. The disaster might have been avoided even then if the other Bitrans had thought to smother or beat the fire out...but instead, they'd breached a couple of water barrels. The first fire was quickly brought under control, but while the holders were still preoccupied with congratulating themselves the water they'd used had continued a dragonlength down the sloping floor of the cavern towards a pallet of firestone sacks that should never have been left anywhere near the other stores. Several explosions had followed in quick succession. The first, from the firestone, had been strong enough to stun...but also strong enough to disturb the contents of the adjacent feed-store as well. The second explosion, fuelled by dry straw and grain-dust, had been _considerably_ larger than the first – large enough that it had still been smouldering a full day later, when D'vid's Wing had arrived above the Hold.

None of the immediate witnesses had survived.

After that, with Marta and Euan dead and a full nine tenths of Bitra's supplies up in smoke, the entire Hold had descended rapidly into chaos, every man for himself. Fights had broken out almost everywhere, over everything from petty old scores to the smallest new provocations. Family groups barricaded themselves away in defensible back caverns and beasthold stalls, some guarding their lives, others their material possessions. Bitra's volatile firestone stocks were raided repeatedly, resulting in serious structural damage to one of the Hold's residential caverns, the roof of which had subsequently collapsed. Anything of value was looted, and much that was not was simply destroyed.

In Torene's view, it simply beggared belief that a disaster like this could even occur –_ and_ that no word of it had reached the Weyr until it was far too late to matter. Relying on firelizards to carry messages was all very well in principle, but less useful when there weren't more than two dozen of them in an entire Hold, and the people they'd looked to were panicked or sick – or fardling _dead – _or hadn't bothered to train them properly in the first place. Several messages had been sent out, apparently, but none of them had reached Benden Weyr. Benden _Hold_ had had word – Julie's Rementh had passed on the news that a message tube intended for the Weyr had ended up there instead – but although Kiersey, _scorch him_, had quite happily read the contents, he'd neither forwarded it on nor taken any action on Bitra's behalf.

By the time Alaranth's whim had sent D'vid and Polenth and their Wing to Bitra, the damage had already been irreparable. Well over a hundred people had died – far outstripping the losses caused by the contagion from Ierne – supplies meant to keep four and a half thousand people fed through the winter had been destroyed, and the Hold itself had been left practically uninhabitable. The survivors of the chaos were variously injured, confused or already on their way to beg sanctuary in Benden Hold, but if not for D'vid and the dragons putting a stop to it, the more combative elements would probably still have been at each others' throats.

It had always been a risk for a Hold like Bitra, Torene supposed: not all of Bitra's population had been marginalised unfairly by their former Holds, and she doubted that there'd be much surprise elsewhere on Pern at the fact that some had slipped back to the worst of their old ways...in spite of everything that Marta had tried to bring out the best in her people. Perhaps it was a blessing – of sorts, and a small one at that – that she would never know how badly she'd failed.

"Rene?"

Torene looked round and saw D'vid and a couple of his wingriders emerging past the charred timbers that were all that was left of Bitra Hold's main door. A handful of pre-teens trailed in their wake, clutching a pitiful collection of belongings in their arms. "Is that the last group?" she asked.

"Yeah," D'vid said. "Jen here-" and he waved a hand towards one of the girls "-says she's got some family in Boll that she'd like to get in contact with, but the rest of them leapt at the chance to come back with us. What did the group occupying the beasthold say?"

"They're still refusing to budge," Torene snapped. "Oh, and they denied that _they've_ done a damn thing wrong!" And it was probably true that they _hadn't _looted as extensively as some of the other thugs who'd elected to stay and stick things out, but it was equally true that they'd done nothing at all to help anyone else, either.

D'vid shrugged, and gestured for the two greenriders accompanying him to continue on their way. "Their loss, I suppose. I doubt they'll be so comfortable come winter. What about the refugees already on the move?" he asked as soon as Ella and Cr'toph had led the youngsters out of earshot. "Do we have a decision on them? Will Kiersey take them in?"

Torene shook her head. "Only the ones he deems useful, or loyal, or ideally both. The rest, only if they can _pay_ their way. If we can't find a Hold willing to take them..."

"If we can't, we'll take them in ourselves, right?"

"The Weyr doesn't have _room_ for another two hundred people, let alone two thousand!"

D'vid smiled sadly. "You and M'hall will think of something. Or Sean will, or Cara up at Telgar Hold."

Torene sighed. "We'll have to. But I suppose we can accommodate them for now. I'll ask Alaranth to send a Wing to go and find them."

"Speaking of finding," D'vid murmured, pulling a small item from out of his pocket, "Amy Mayhew-Clissman found this among Marta's belongings. She said you gave it to Marta?"

Suspended from his fingers was a small bracelet, composed of coloured beads, pieces of shell, and a variety of wood and metal charms.

"A long time ago," Torene said, taking the bracelet from him. She turned it over in her fingers, recognising only a few of the oldest pieces. "She's added a lot to it since then," she said, slipping it into the pocket of her coat. "Time we left, I think. Those kids will be getting hungry."

Torene walked silently back to Alaranth's side, lost in contemplation. _Where _are _we going to put them all, Allie? There really isn't the room, not in Benden, nor Fort, nor either of the other Weyrs. And the Holds are just as crowded and even less amenable to welcoming in a couple of thousand displaced Bitrans!_

_It seems quite strange to me. Why are the humans in the Holds so cruel to one another? The weyrfolk are rarely like that._

_I don't know, _ Torene thought. Or maybe she did, maybe she simply didn't want to admit it to herself? The situation in the Holds had been worsening year on year for well over a decade...and perhaps the cause of all the problems had never been entirely out of the Weyrs' hands. _Oh Allie! It's just going to get worse, isn't it? We can't _ really _intervene...we can only keep on as we are, flaming the skies free of thread and culling every last drop of compassion out of the Holds, clutch by clutch by clutch!_

Alaranth snorted. _Torene, my heart. You're exhausted, and you're being foolish. Weyrfolk clutch babies just as well as Holders do, but I've yet to meet a child that thought a hair's breadth beyond the reach of its own fists. Humans are humans. You grow up good or bad, cruel or kind, but few of the mistakes you choose for yourselves are unforgivable. Pern will survive, and so will the Pernese we all protect. For as long as some of them are found worthy of dragons, they will all prove worthy of our sacrifices in the end._

The queen's words lifted Torene's spirits immeasurably, as did the thought that followed them.

_As for the refugees, I believe D'vid is right, _ Alaranth thought reassuringly. _You will think of something, just as the Leader did when there was no room for us in Fort._

_Just as...Allie, that's IT! We don't have room for them in _ our _ Weyr...but what's to say they can't find a home in a new one? There's a promising caldera in the mountains in the northwest, and another likely spot in that sandstone canyon bordering the deserts south of Telgar. And if we _are_ to cover every last Threadfall in the north from now on, we'll need to found at least one more Weyr in any case.  
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Alaranth's mind brightened with delight. _Another new Weyr? What a marvellous idea! You would send the Bitrans to build it for us?_

Torene hurried the last few strides to her queen's side, brimming with new hope. _I don't see why not! If Marta saw something worthwhile in them, I'm certain that the company of dragons can bring the best of it out. _She didn't imagine that it would be easy...but it was definitely worth a try.

* * *

><p><em>AN: The chapter titles throughout come straight out of 'The Second Coming', and were actually added in after the story was fully plotted out. I hope they weren't overly spoilerish - given the state of Pern in subsequent Passes, it shouldn't come as much surprise that Bitra didn't get the name change that Marta had planned on, or even a happy ending at all. T<em>_he DLG basically attributes its name to a gang of conspiracy theorists who believed Bitra was Pern's saviour, murdered by the PTB of Benden et all. I've added an extra layer behind that... because now the survivors who end up running the place really _are_ the dregs of Pern. Some of Kiersey's folk are probably going to come over/rise up from within and try to gain control, and from there it's not too many steps to Chalkin and his ilk. At least Fort is going to come to its senses again at some point during the Interval. The pressures are always least then - no Thread to worry about, and the best people aren't being swept away to the Weyr several times a year... That's the _bad_ side of Impression, the nasty sociological side-effect for the Holds, and I don't think anyone else has ever explored it before. Let me know if you find another example, please!_

_This chapter also includes a very hefty chunk of speculation in the idea that firehead might be linked to a lethal interaction between thread, Pern's biome and terran bacteria/plants/human waste. Take it as you will, with or without a bag of salt! Laura Radamanth might be completely out in left field with that idea ;-) But... Todd wrote a heck of a lot of plagues into Pernese canon, and you know what? I wanted to attempt to find a semi-plausible _reason_ for them. __Most of the details are my own invention here, but his portrayal of Wind Blossom and Emorra in Dragonsblood gave me the excuse to make their expertise available to the story, and to allow the tech level to still be sufficiently high to sustain some level of scientific research and practice in that area. The exact reason why the South is banned will have to be forgotten over the course of the next interval, but by then the focus on inhabiting the northern continent fully and preparing for Thread's return should be enough to keep people's minds on that instead._

_Also... I couldn't really include the flamestone variant of firestone _without _finding a place for a really, really big explosion, right?_

_Thanks to all the reviewers - you guys are the best!_


	6. Epilogue

Alaranth emerged from _between_ high above the island, far enough up that Torene could almost make out the headland that marked its southerly tip. The queen circled as she descended, giving Torene plenty of time to choose somewhere to land.

_There, I think, _Torene thought, focusing her attention on the ruins of the watchtower on top of Beacon Hill.

Alaranth landed a few lengths down the slope from the crumbling building. Thread had fallen a day or two previously, and the newly ruined ground was littered with the blackened husks of starved threads...but Marta had been right: the view was incredible. Torene dismounted, then started towards the summit, fingering Marta's bracelet as she walked. The wire would last indefinitely, as would the semi-precious gemstones, but the engraved shells were probably too fragile to survive, and, if left out in the open, the small wooden charms would almost certainly be lost to Thread before the year was out. Life was like that, she supposed, slipping the bracelet back into her pocket: some things lasted, other things didn't...but you did what was possible to save as much of worth as you could. The south might be lost to them, but the north had a good chance now: only nine more years of thread, and then two full centuries in which they could all rebuild. They'd make it work, she promised herself.

She made a full circuit of the ruins before returning to the north-west wall, which would see the sun for most of the day and be spared the worst of Threadfall. There, Torene crouched down, took out her belt-knife, and dug out the last of the mortar that was all that held one of the smaller and looser stones in place. The stone itself wasn't as easy to work free as she'd expected, but eventually she managed it. Letting the stone fall, she took Marta's bracelet from her pocket and tucked it safely into the gap. There it could stay, the last remnant of a good woman, in the place that she'd always loved the best.

And that was that.

Torene got back to her feet, then made her way quickly back down the hillside to where Alaranth was waiting for her. The air flowing up from the sea was warm and strong, and the queen made easy work of getting airborne again, gaining altitude rapidly. Far below, the beach was stained by an irregular band of bright yellow. The way the sunlight and shadows were falling, it looked almost like a dragon's head and two great wings of gold, emerging from the water at the tide's turning.

Torene closed her eyes on the sight, knowing that neither she nor anyone else alive would ever see Ierne again.

_Take us home, Allie, _she thought as she visualised the peaks of Benden Weyr._ Take us home._

* * *

><p><em>and they tell of gold <em>||_ at the tide's turning_

_salt wet sand _||_ bright-stained with poison_

_fire and fever _||_ at thread's falling_

_dragons keening _||_ tears of mourning_

_but they tell of gold _||_ at the tide's turning_

_brave Torene _||_ of Benden, standing_

_fire and spirit _||_ dragons holding_

_through the nights _||_ until the morning_

* * *

><p><em>AN: If you've read this far - thank you.<em>

_Somewhere in this story, there's a whole novel fighting to get out. In an ideal world with more time and energy for writing, I'd have spent a lot more time with Marta at Bitra, and another strand following Laura Radamanth's studies of Thread and various other bits of the Pernese ecology, showing this stage of the Pern timeline and the changes to Pernese society from all three angles: Weyr, Hold and Craft. Wind Blossom picked up the essential parts of Laura's plot in the end, which I hope worked well enough under the more restrictive circumstances of a single POV novella. _

_('Restrictive', she says? Ha. Well, it was when there was a deadline involved and only so much writing time available.)_

_Finally - this is where I handwave the detail about Bitra's founding (which supposedly happened in the Interval, not the Pass!) that one of the AO3 reviewers pointed out in the comments of chapter 1, rather than spoiling things back there. Readers can choose their favourite option from the following: [1] this is simply an AU where the Hold _was_ founded during the Pass, [2] 'After the First Fall' simply means after the *start* of the first Pass, not specifically into the following interval, or [3] history is written by the victors! Bitra got formally re-founded a couple of years into the Interval, and whichever thug or Benden Minion ended up moving into the power vacuum didn't care to give Marta any credit!_

_Thanks to Amy B, my long-suffering beta-reader, and thanks as always to everyone who leaves reviews/favourites - you make me happy! If you have any questions about this story, drop me a message or a signed review that I can reply to.  
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